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A COMMUNITY CENTER 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

H»W YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lto. 

TORONTO 



MAY 15 1918 




THE TWO AMBITIONS . . . FRANK F. STONE 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 

WHAT IT IS AND 
HOW TO ORGANIZE IT 



BY 

HENRY E. JACKSON 

Special Agent in Community Organization 

United States Bureau of Education 

Washington, D. C. 



Every Schoolhouse a Community Capitol 
and e'very Community a little Democracy 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1918 

AXL rights reserved 






COPYRIQHT, 1918 

By the macmillan company 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, May, 1918 



MAV 16 1918 

©CI.A497?iU6. 



THE WHITE HOUSE 
WASHINGTON 

March 13, 1918. 
Dear Mr, Chairman: 

Your state, in extending its national defense organi- 
zation by the creation of community councils, is in my 
opinion making an advance of vital significance. It will, 
I believe, result when thoroughly carried out in weld- 
ing the nation together as no nation of great size has 
ever been welded before. It will build up from the 
bottom an understanding and sympathy and unity of pur- 
pose and effort which will no doubt have an immediate 
and decisive effect upon our great undertaking. You will 
find it, I think, not so much a new task as a unification of 
existing efforts, a fusion of energies now too much 
scattered and at times somewhat confused into one har- 
monious and effective power. 

It is only by extending your organization to small 
communities that every citizen of the state can be reached 
and touched with the inspiration of the common cause. 
The school house has been suggested as an apt though not 
essential center for your local council. It symbolizes 
one of the first fruits of such an organization, namely, 
the spreading of the realization of the great truth that it 
is each one of us as an individual citizen upon whom rests 
the ultimate responsibility. Through this great new 
organization we will express with added emphasis our 
will to win and our confidence in the utter righteousness 
of our purpose. 

Sincerely yours, 
(Signed) WooDROw Wilson. 
[Letter sent to the chairmen of 
State Councils of Defense] 



"A system of general instruction, which shall reach 
every description of our citizens, from the richest to the 
poorest, as it was the earliest, so it shall be the latest of 
all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to 
take an interest." 

Thomas Jefferson. 



FOREWORD 

The challenge of the World War to all 
thoughtful people is to organize human life 
on saner and juster lines in the construction 
of a better sort of world. This bulletin aims 
to make a suggestion toward an answer to this 
challenge. 

The sorrow and tragedy of the war cause 
men and women everywhere to ask themselves 
not only what sort of a world they ought to 
work for, but also how and where they can be- 
gin to work for it. To find a practical answer 
to these questions is the persistent prayer of 
all who believe in democracy. Honest prayer 
is the expression of a dominant desire for what 
we believe is best and also the willingness to 
cooperate in bringing it to pass. The follow- 
ing pages are addressed to those who are will- 
ing to cooperate in answering their own 
prayers, to those who know what sort of world 
they ought to work for but are at a loss to 
know what is the best instrument to be used 



FOREWORD 

for constructing it. This bulletin suggests 
such an instrument. 

It is a curious fact that usually it is com- 
paratively easy to interest ten men in an in- 
definite scheme about which they have nothing 
to do but talk, whereas it is difficult to induce 
one man to undertake a more modest but defi- 
nite piece of constructive work. But the war 
has awakened the desire of all people of good 
will to do something. They want to make a 
motor-reaction to the war's challenge. They 
say: "We see what needs to be done. What 
is the best instrument with which to do it? 
That is the difficult thing to find." The sug- 
gestion here made is intended for such people, 
who have discovered the futility of attempting 
to purify the water in a well by painting the 
pump, and who therefore seek a constructive 
plan in the process of building a better world. 

The instrument here suggested is The Com- 
munity Center, which may be put into opera- 
tion anywhere, in city, village, or countryside. 
If we desire to get anywhere, we have to start 
from somewhere. The place to start from is 
where we are. The best point of contact with 
the world problem, raised anew by the war, is 



FOREWORD 

to be found in the community where we live, 
for the world problem exists in every com- 
munity in America. All political questions, 
if considered fundamentally, will be found to 
apply to human needs which are at once lo- 
cal, national, and international. The inter- 
national problem is now, and has always been, 
how to organize and keep organized a method 
of mutual understanding by which nations 
may cooperate rather than compete with each 
other. The national problem is to do the 
same for the social and economic forces within 
the Nation itself. The problem in any local 
community is to do the same for the forces 
operating in that community. With reference 
to this present and permanent world problem 
the writer has attempted to answer two ques- 
tions — what is a community center, and how 
ought it to be organized. He has endeavored 
to make the answer as brief as may be con- 
sistent with clearness. 

Our three most urgent national needs are to 
mobilize intelligence, food, and money. But 
it is not possible to mobilize them until we 
first mobilize the people. The Nation's pres- 
ent need has made apparent the necessity of 



organizing local communities. The Council 
of National Defense discovered it through its 
experience in the war. The Bureau of Edu- 
cation had begun the task before we entered 
the war. These two organizations have now 
united their forces for the accomplishment of 
their common purpose to promote community 
organization throughout the Nation. The 
slogan of the one is, ^'Every school district a 
community council for national service.'' 
The slogan of the other is, '^Every schoolhouse 
a community capitol and every community a 
little democracy." 

President Wilson has clearly indicated the 
profound significance of this movement in the 
letter he wrote to commend it. He elsewhere 
says that our present need is "to arouse and 
inform the people so that each individual may 
be able to play his part intelligently in our 
great struggle for democracy and justice." 
This is a perfect statement of the aim of our 
movement. With the addition of one word it 
would be a complete description of it. That 
one word is "organize." The aim of the 
movement — to arouse and inform the people, 
to enable each individual to play his part in- 



FOREWORD 

telligently — can be achieved only when the 
people organize themselves. 

The creation of a democratic and intelligent 
social order is essentially the same task, 
whether our approach to it be local, national, 
or international. This fact has been clearly 
understood by thinkers as far back as Socrates, 
who said: "Then, without determining as 
yet whether war does good or harm, this much 
we may affirm, that now we have discovered 
war to be derived from causes which are also 
the causes of almost all the evil in States, pri- 
vate as well as public." Any one, therefore, 
who attempts to remove these causes in a local 
community is working at a world problem, 
and he who attempts to remove them as be- 
tween nations is obliged, in order to preserve 
his honesty and self-respect, to make the same 
effort within his own nation and in his own 
community. It magnifies the value and 
stimulates one's zest in working for it to re- 
member that a community center is the center 
of concentric circles which compass not only 
the local community but also the larger com- 
munities of the Nation and the world. To es- 
tablish free trade in friendship in all three 



FOREWORD 

communities is the goal of the community cen- 
ter movement. 

Henry E. Jackson. 
February i, 191 8. 



NOTE 

This book contains the reproduction of a 
bulletin, published simultaneously under the 
same title, by the United States Bureau of 
Education. The Bureau of Education is 
limited by law to 12,500 copies of its bulletins. 
But in its agreement with the Council of 
National Defense to promote jointly the or- 
ganization of local communities, it promised 
to print and distribute, if possible, 300,000 
copies, so that each school district in the 
United States might receive one copy. Since 
special funds for this purpose have not yet 
been secured, the bulletin is reproduced in this 
form to make it more available for use in the 
national campaign for the organization of 
community centers and community councils. 
The book contains also an additional section 
describing typical community centers in opera- 
tion. 

The Publishers. 



CONTENTS 



The President's Letter 
Letter of Transmittal 
Foreword .... 



Part I— WHAT IS A COMMUNITY CEN 
TER? 

The People's University 
The Community Capitol 
The Community Forum 
The Neighborhood Club 
The Home and School League 
The Community Bank . 
The Cooperative Exchange 
The Child's Right of Way 

Part II— HOW TO ORGANIZE A COM- 
MUNITY CENTER . 

A Little Democracy . 
Membership in America 
The Community Secretary 
The Board of Directors 
The Trouble Committee 
Public and Self-support 
A Working Constitution 
Decrease of Organizations 
The House of the People 
Free Trade in Friendship 



PAGE 

vii 

ix 

xili 



3 
3 

5 

7 
II 

17 

22 

27 
32 

39 

39 
42 

45 
50 
53 
57 
61 
66 
74 
83 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Part III— THE PRACTICE OF CITIZEN- 
SHIP 97 

The "Common House" .... 97 

How It Works 98 

A Village loi 

A Country-side 104 

A Suburb 108 

A Small City 114 

An Average City 117 

A Big City 122 

A State 126 

A Half-finished Product . . .132 
"Never so Baffled, But — " . .135 

Lincoln's Mistake 138 

The Meaning of the Flag . . 140 

Part IV— A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 149 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Two Ambitions Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

A Suggested Symbol for the use of Community 

Centers 39 



Shoes which suggest a social program .... 97 



LETTER OE TRANSMITTAL 

Department of the Interior, 
Bureau of Education, 
Washington, February 19, 191 8. 

Sir: To make more valuable to the people 
those things from which the people are accus- 
tomed to derive value has very appropriately 
been said to be the prime business of legis- 
lators. That the schoolhouse, whose value to 
the people is already great, may become still 
more valuable to them, is the purpose of the 
community-organization movement which 
this bureau has undertaken to foster. 

A great democracy like ours, extending over 
more than three and one-half million square 
miles of territory and including more than 
100,000,000 people must be alive, intelligent, 
and virtuous in all its parts. Every unit of 
it must be democratic. The ultimate unit in 
every State, Territory, and possession of the 
United States is the school district. Every 
school district should therefore be a little 
democracy, and the schoolhouse should be the 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 

community capitol. Here the people should 
meet to discuss among themselves their com- 
mon interests and to devise methods of helpful 
cooperation. It should also be the social cen- 
ter of the community, w^here all the people 
come together in a neighborly way on terms 
of democratic equality, learn to knov^ each 
other, and extend and enrich the community 
sympathies. 

For this purpose the schoolhouse is spe- 
cially fitted; it is nonsectarian and nonpar- 
tisan; the property of no individual, group, or 
clique, but the common property of all; the 
one place in every community in which all 
have equal rights and all are equally at home. 
The schoolhouse is also made sacred to every 
family and to the community as a whole by 
the fact that it is the home of their children 
and the training place of future citizens. 
Here all members of the community may 
appropriately send themselves to school to 
each other and learn from each other of things 
pertaining to the life of the local community, 
the State, the Nation, and the world. 

The appropriation of the schoolhouse for 
community uses has well been called "a master 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 

stroke of the new democracy." These facts 
are not new, but the emphasis on their im- 
portance is new and amounts to a new dis- 
covery. The Nation's immediate need to mo- 
bilize the sentiments of the people and to 
make available the material resources has 
directed special attention to the schoolhouse as 
an effective agency ready-made to its hand for 
this purpose. The national importance of 
this new organization is evidenced by the fact 
that the Council of National Defense has 
planned a nation-wide movement to organize 
school districts or similar communities of the 
United States as the ultimate branches of its 
council of defense system, believing that the 
organization of communities will enable the 
Council of National Defense to put directly 
before the individual citizen the needs of the 
Nation, to create and unify their sentiment, 
and to mobilize and direct their efforts for 
the- defense of the Nation. 

In order that this organization may be most 
effective and be made permanent, the council 
has expressed a desire to cooperate with the 
Bureau of Education, and I have detailed one 
of the specialists in community organization to 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 

cooperate with the council for the accomplish- 
ment of our common purpose. That the peo- 
ple may have information in regard to com- 
munity organization in its simplest form, I 
recommend that the manuscript transmitted 
herewith be published as a bulletin of the 
Bureau of Education. It has been prepared 
at my request by Dr. Henry E. Jackson, the 
bureau's special agent in community organ- 
ization. 

Respectfully submitted. 

P. P. Claxton, 

Commissioner. 

The Secretary of the Interior. 



PART I 
WHAT IS A COMMUNITY CENTER? 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 

WHAT IT IS AND 
HOW TO ORGANIZE IT 

WHAT IS A COMMUNITY CENTER? 

THE people's university 
"All men naturally desire knowledge," is 
the buoyant sentence with which Aristotle be- 
gins his great book on Ethics. It states our 
ground of hope for the possibility of progress 
and for the success of democracy. No demo- 
cratic form of government can long endure 
without popular education or the means of 
acquiring it. The first and chief aim of the 
community center movement is to deepen the 
content and broaden the scope of the term 
"education" and to extend the activities of 
the public schools so that they may evolve into 
people's universities. 

When it is remembered that only lo per 
cent of the adult citizens have had a high- 

3 



4 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

school education and only 50 per cent have 
ever completed the grammar grades, it be- 
comes apparent that one of our greatest na- 
tional needs is a university for the education of 
grown men and women. The public school 
as a community center is the answer to this 
national need. The community center move- 
ment recognizes the fact that the mind matures 
more slowly than the body and that education 
is a life-long process. While the public 
school is dedicated primarily to the welfare of 
the child, it is becoming daily more evident 
that the Nation's welfare requires it to be used 
for adults and youths as well. Notwithstand- 
ing the fact that it is our finest American in- 
vention and the most successful social enter- 
prise ever undertaken, its golden age lies be- 
fore it. It is now being discovered anew in 
its possibilities for larger public service. The 
fact that all men naturally desire knowledge 
is the fact which has justified the investment 
of $1,347,000,000 in the public school equip- 
ment; it is the fact which now justifies the use 
of this equipment by adults. In every part of 
the country there is a manifest tendency for 
the public school to develop into a house of 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 5 

the people to be used by them for "mutual aid 
in self-development." This is the significant 
fact at the heart of the community center 
movement and the touchstone of its value for 
the national welfare. 

THE COMMUNITY CAPITOL 

"The walls of Sparta are built of Spartans," 
sang an old poet. The walls of America like- 
wise are built of Americans. The primary 
function of the public schools is to make, not 
merely good men and women, but good citi- 
zens for the Republic. From the standpoint 
of citizenship, therefore, every schoolhouse 
ought to be used as a polling place. This is 
the first logical step toward making it the com- 
munity capitol, although it may not be the 
first step chronologically. This use of the 
schoolhouse would save every State many 
thousands of dollars each year. When the 
people already own these houses, conveniently 
distributed in every section of the country, why 
should public funds be wasted in rent for other 
buildings? But economy, while a sufficient, is 
not the chief reason for making the school- 
house a polling place. The best reason is the 



6 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

ideal for which the ballot box stands. It is 
the symbol of citizenship in America. As 
such it deserves a worthy place. In the last 
presidential election, President Wilson voted 
in a fire-engine house in Princeton, and Candi- 
date Hughes voted in a laundry in New York 
City. Hitherto any kind of a place has been 
considered fit for the highest act of citizenship. 
In the Hebrew republic the symbol of the 
nation was a small richly decorated box called 
the "Ark of the Covenant." It was kept in 
the most honored place in the national Temple 
at the capital. The corresponding emblem in 
the American Republic is the ballot box. It 
ought to occupy a place befitting its import- 
ance. The one fitting place is the public 
schoolhouse, the community capitol and the 
temple of American democracy. Moreover, 
the voting instrument, which is the chief na- 
tional emblem in every democracy, should be 
constructed with architectural dignity and es- 
tablished permanently in the schoolhouse be- 
cause of the ideals it embodies and the supreme 
function it serves. It would thus be a per- 
petual reminder that the function of the 
school is to make citizens for the Republic. 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 7 

It would cause the question repeatedly to be 
asked, What kind of school subjects are best 
calculated to make good citizens? It would 
help to keep the curriculum vitalized, by con- 
necting it with practical and national 
processes. 

It can continue to be vital only by the con- 
tinued process of adapting itself to meet the 
Nation's expanding needs. A fixed curricu- 
lum is a false curriculum. The significant 
fact about a school is not the condition in 
which it is, but the direction in which it is 
moving. Its only safety, like that of an indi- 
vidual, lies in moving on. It will be stimu- 
lated to move on by making the practice of 
citizenship to be its goal. A constant re- 
minder of the practice of citizenship is the 
presence of the polling instrument in the 
school. 

THE COMMUNITY FORUM 

It may or may not have been a mistake to 
have granted suffrage to the average man. 
An educational and character qualification for 
voting may now be the wiser policy to pursue 
in regard to both men and women, for no 



8 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

man is fit to govern another unless he has suffi- 
cient self-control to govern himself, and yet 
no man, however intelligent, can be trusted to 
govern another man without his consent. At 
any rate, universal manhood suffrage is the 
present fact, and nothing is so convincing as 
a fact. ' Inasmuch as the right to vote on pub- 
lic policies is now in the hands of the average 
man, it is of paramount importance that he 
should be given the opportunity to make him- 
self fit to perform this function intelligently. 
This is the necessity on which the community 
forum fundamentally rests. It is a school for 
citizenship. 

The community forum is the meeting of 
citizens in their schoolhouse for the courteous 
and orderly discussion of all questions which 
concern their common welfare. A com- 
munity may begin with questions in which 
local interest is manifest, such as good roads, 
or public health, or the method of raising and 
spending public funds, or methods of produc- 
tion and transportation of food products. A 
discussion of these questions will reveal at 
once the fact that they transcend local limits. 
A road is built to go somewhere, and it will 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 9 

relate one community to another.^ Local 
health conditions can not be maintained with- 
out considering other localities, for the causes 
of local disease frequently lie elsewhere. 

A local community pays part of the revenue 
raised by the county. The expenditure of 
these funds, therefore, is the affair of the local 
community. The same is true of the adminis- 
tration of State funds. The question of pro- 
duction and transportation is no longer re- 
garded as a rural problem or a city problem, 
but a national problem. The reason why no 
community should live for itself is because 
none exists by itself. Every community is at 
the center of several concentric circles. The 
subjects of most value for discussion in a local 
forum are those which connect it with county, 
State, and National interests. And herein 
lies the educational value of the forum. 

One of the folk high schools of Denmark 
maintains a regular study called "A Window 
in the West," the purpose of which is to ac- 
quire new ideas from England and America, 
that Denmark may use them for its own im- 
provement. Such a course should be in 
the curriculum of every public school. 



lo A COMMUNITY CENTER 

The aim of the forum is to put a new win- 
dow into the mental outlook of every com- 
munity. The value of an open mind can not 
be calculated. Every great leader of the 
world's thought and action has insisted on its 
indispensable importance. Confucius ex- 
pressed it in the golden phrase "mental hos- 
pitality." Socrates used a phrase out of which 
was coined the word "philosopher." He said, 
"I am not a wise man ; I am a lover of wisdom ; 
a seeker after new ideas." Jesus called it, 
"the spirit of truth." So highly did he regard 
it that he called it a holy spirit. The reason 
why these masterful leaders of men so prized 
the habit of being open-minded is because 
they understood that without mental hos- 
pitality no progress in any line is possible. 

Ours is a Government by public opinion. 
It is obvious that the public welfare requires 
that public opinion be informed and educated. 
The forum is an instrument fitted to meet this 
most urgent public need. It is organized not 
on the basis of agreement, but of difference. 
It aims not at uniformity, but unity. It 
would be a stupid and unprogressive world if 
all were forced to think alike. We are under 



A COMMUNITY CENTER ii 

no obligation to agree with each other, but as 
neighbors and as members of America it is our 
moral and patriotic duty to make the attempt 
to understand each other. 

Public discussion renders a great variety of 
services to spiritual and social progress. It 
puts a premium on intelligence, liberates a 
community from useless customs, puts a check 
on hasty action, secures united approval for 
measures proposed, creates the spirit of toler- 
ance, promotes cooperation, and best of all and 
hardest of all it equips citizens with the ability 
to differ in opinion without differing in feel- 
ing. This habit can be acquired only through 
practice. The forum furnishes the means for 
mutual understanding. It aims to create 
public-mindedness. 

THE NEIGHBORHOOD CLUB 
The basic assumption of the community 
center movement is that democracy is the or- 
ganization of society on the basis of friend- 
ship. *^Man is a political animal," said 
Aristotle. He requires the companionship of 
his fellows. His happiness is largely linked 
up with their approval. His instinctive need 



12 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

for fellowship leads him to create a sort of 
social center out of anything available for the 
purpose. The post office has served as such a 
village center, but the free delivery of mail is 
destroying its social uses. The corner store 
has acquired fame as an informal forum and 
neighborly club, but the mail-order house is 
rapidly robbing it of members, and at best it 
serves only a few. The saloon has served the 
purpose of a neighborhood club and friendly 
meeting place on equal terms for large num- 
bers of men, but moral and economic consid- 
erations have doomed it to extinction. 

The post office, corner store, and saloon are 
passing as social centers, but they must be re- 
placed with something better if they are not 
to be replaced with something worse. For 
only he can destroy who can replace. The 
public school therefore stands before an open 
door of opportunity to become a neighborhood 
club, where the people can meet on terms 
which preserve their self-respect. Almost 
every individual lives in the center of several 
concentric circles. There is the little inner 
circle of his intellectual and spiritual com- 
rades; then the larger circle of his friends; 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 13 

beyond that the still larger circle of those with 
whom the business of life brings him into con- 
tact; and the largest circle of all includes all 
members of the community as fellow citizens. 
There need be no conflict among these circles, 
no suggestion of inferiority or superiority. It 
is never to be forgotten that these circles are 
concentric. The experiences of life make 
them natural and necessary. 

The community center is limited only by 
this last and largest circle. It seeks to 
broaden the basis of unity among men, to mul- 
tiply their points of contact, to consider those 
interests which all have in common. It is not 
difficult to discover that the interests, which 
unite men, are bigger, both in number and 
importance, than those which separate them. 
The list of things which can only be achieved 
as joint enterprises is long. Roads can only 
be built by community cooperation. Only so 
can the community's health be safeguarded. 
Food, clothing, and shelter are the common 
needs of all. Production and transportation 
are therefore questions of social service. The 
Greek word for "private," peculiar to one's 
self, unrelated to the interest of others, is the 



14 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

original of our word *'idiot." The corre- 
sponding modern term in our common speech 
is ''crank." The community center is a sure 
cure for ''cranks." It aims to promote pub- 
lic-mindedness. 

The schoolhouse used as a neighborhood 
club renders therefore an invaluable public 
service. It seeks to create the neighborly 
spirit essential for concerted action. The 
means employed are various — games, folk 
dances, dramas, chorus singing — vs^hich re- 
quire the subordination of self to cooperative 
efifort, dinner parties, w^here the people break 
bread in celebration of their communion w^ith 
each other as neighbors. These activities not 
only render a service to the individual by pro- 
moting his happiness and decreasing his lone- 
liness, they discover in the community unsus- 
pected abilities and unused resources. To set 
them to w^ork not only develops the individual 
but enriches the community life. 

The same is true of the spirit of play in gen- 
eral. To cultivate the spirit of play not only 
meets an instinctive human need for physical 
and mental recreation, but renders a distinc- 
tive service to democracy on account of its 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 15 

spiritual value. One can carry on the work 
of destruction by himself, but he must organize 
in order to produce. He must cooperate in 
order to play. He can not monopolize the 
victory; he must share it with the team. Play 
thus develops the spirit of sportsmanship, the 
willingness to play fair, the capacity to be a 
good loser. 

It thus becomes apparent that the neighbor- 
hood club furnishes the key to the possible 
solution of a variety of problems — the Amer- 
icanization problem, for example. The ob- 
ject of the community-center movement is to 
achieve ^^freemen's citizenship," both for na- 
tive and foreign-born alike. But citizenship 
means membership. It is obvious that the 
teaching of English to aliens is not sufficient 
to make them members of America. To ac- 
quire the language as a means of communica- 
tion with their fellows is, of course, a neces- 
sary preliminary. But it is only a means to 
an end. If they are ever to feel that they be- 
long with us, the right hand of fellowship 
must be extended to them. The neighbor- 
hood spirit alone can create in them the spirit 
of America. One of the by-laws of the con- 



i6 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

stitution of the Hebrew republic was to this 
effect: "Love ye, therefore, the resident 
alien for ye were resident aliens in the land of 
Egypt." This law does not enjoin citizens to 
teach them the language of the land. The 
necessity for that is assumed. The chief thing 
needful, it says, is to love them. Friendliness 
is not only the soul of democracy but also the 
most successful method of securing practical 
results. The community center is the most 
available and effective instrument through 
which this method can be applied. The 
process of Americanization consists essentially 
not in learning a language but in acquiring a 
spirit. 

Cooperation and the spirit of sportsmanship 
are indispensable qualities for citizens of a 
democracy. The spirit and purpose of a 
neighborhood club are clearly suggested by 
the significant questions asked and answered 
by a negro bishop of Kansas. "When is a 
man lost?" he asked. "A man is never lost 
when he doesn't know where he is, for he 
always knows where he is wherever he is. A 
man is lost when he doesn't know where the 
other folks are." 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 17 

THE HOME AND SCHOOL LEAGUE 

The free public school is at once the product 
and safeguard of democracy. The kind of 
public school, therefore, which a community 
has, is an accurate index of its community 
consciousness and its estimate of democratic 
ideals. "The average farmer and rural 
teacher," says T. J. Coates, "think of the rural 
school as a little equipment where a little 
teacher, at a little salary, for a little while, 
teaches little children little things." The ob- 
ject of the home and school department of 
the community center is to substitute the word 
"big" for the word "little" in the above state- 
ment, to magnify the work and function of 
the school, to make it worthy to occupy a 
larger place in the people's thought and affec- 
tion. This is the work which Home and 
School Leagues are now doing. The com- 
munity center in no wise interferes with their 
work. It is not a rival but an ally. Its plan 
is to give to and not to take from the Home and 
School League. Indeed, it is probable that 
the Home and School League quite generally, 
may become the parent organization out of 



i8 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

which will be born the community center. 
This is the natural and logical thing to happen, 
and in many places it is the process of develop- 
ment now in operation. Wherever this oc- 
curs it is against the natural order for the 
mother to be jealous of the daughter. If and 
when a Home and School League expands it- 
self into a community center, it ought to be- 
come a department of the community organ- 
ization. 

By becoming a department of a larger or- 
ganization and limiting itself to its own special 
task, the Home and School League will not 
only do its work better, but will find it more 
than sufficient to occupy all its time. Its spe- 
cific work is to promote the progress of the 
school and to improve the school equipment. 
To this end it seeks to secure closer co- 
operation between the home and school, the 
parents and teachers. When Madame de 
Stael asked Napoleon what was needed to im- 
prove the educational system of France, he re- 
plied, '^Better mothers.'' The noblest influ- 
ence on any child is that of a good mother. 
Every school, therefore, ought to strive to keep 
a close bond between the home and itself. It 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 19 

ought to do so not only for the sake of the 
children while they are in school but also be- 
fore they come to school and after they leave 
it. To build battlements around girls and 
boys at the point of their greatest danger, dur- 
ing the period between 16 and 21, when they 
are most neglected, is a task worthy in itself to 
enlist the deepest interest and occupy the en- 
tire energy of the Home and School League. 

The three unsettled questions which school- 
masters are always debating — the content of 
the curriculum, the method of teaching, and 
the business management — will be illuminated 
if there is brought to bear upon them the view- 
point of parents who own and support the 
schools and who are interested to get the 
proper return on their investment. The same 
will be true of all school questions if con- 
sidered from the standpoint of the community 
center. It will connect school activities with 
life processes. This means vitality for the 
school. For, as the great educational re- 
former Grundtvig said, ^'Any school that has 
its beginning in the alphabet and its ending 
only in book learning is a school of death." 

Inasmuch as the key to a better school is a 



20 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

better teacher, the home and school depart- 
ment of the community center will make it its 
special aim to develop the type of teacher 
described in Herbert Quick's ^'The Brown 
Mouse." It will endeavor to secure for 
teachers not only a larger degree of moral 
support but more adequate financial support, 
which is not the only thing needful, but the 
first thing needful toward the attainment of 
this goal. The constructive service rendered 
to the Republic by public-school teachers is as 
important, if not the most important, rendered 
by any class of public servants, and they are 
not mercenary or lacking in heroic devotion to 
the common welfare. But it is idle to expect 
that the right type of teacher can be secured 
or retained without a decent living wage. If 
Henry Ford is able to make $5 the minimum 
daily wage for the work of producing his 
machines, there is still more justification for 
fixing this as the minimum for the far more 
delicate and difficult business of making citi- 
zens for the Nation. When a community 
offers such a wage, then and then only will it 
be able to secure a $5 type of person for the 
position. In order to retain them after they 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 21 

are secured there ought to be a school manse 
— a teachers' house — as part of the necessary 
equipment of every school. Proper support 
and housing in order to secure the right type 
of teacher in itself constitutes a worthy pro- 
gram for this department. 

The home and school department will 
naturally have charge of such school-extension 
activities as evening classes for youths and 
adults. These classes should be designed not 
only as a part of the work in the Ameri- 
canization of immigrants, but for the better 
equipment of all citizens. "It is the prime 
business of legislators," said Confucius, "to 
make more valuable to the people those things 
from which the people are accustomed to 
derive value." This states in brief the func- 
tion of the home and school department. The 
Nation's destiny was decided at the beginning 
by the establishment, for the first time in the 
modern world, of a free public-school system. 
To keep vital its processes and to improve its 
equipment that it may be still more valuable to 
the people is the chief business of this depart- 
ment. 



22 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

THE COMMUNITY BANK 

The purpose of discussion in a community 
forum is not entertainment but action. It is 
responsible discussion ; that is, it is discussion 
by citizens who bear the responsibility for 
voting on the questions under discussion. 
Such questions will be many and various. 
Some will have a temporary and some a per- 
manent value. They will naturally grow out 
of community-center activities. But in order 
to guarantee that these social recreational and 
educational activities shall be related to life 
there ought to be established one or two de- 
partments to meet concrete human needs. 

One of the best of these is a community 
bank, for it not only meets a practical need 
but also cultivates an ethical view of money 
and uses it as a means of moral culture. A 
community bank is primarily a savings bank 
both for children and adults. As regards 
children, it ought, so far as possible, to be a 
part of the curriculum of the school. Such 
banks are now conducted in many schools for 
children. Cooperative banks are conducted 
for adults in some States under the name of 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 23 

credit unions. New York State has a good 
law on credit unions, on which the laws of 
other States have been modeled. 

But a real community bank is designed to 
serve other purposes than those of saving. Its 
aim is to multiply the efficiency of the people's 
savings by pooling them for cooperative uses. 
Its aim is to capitalize character and to 
democratize credit. It serves a community 
use by enabling the people to do jointly what 
they can not do separately. By clubbing their 
resources they can use their own money for 
their own productive purposes. 

Such a bank operated for the common wel- 
fare will not only furnish the working capital 
for community enterprises, but will also be a 
loan society. It will make short-time loans 
to its members on reasonable terms. It will 
thus become the salvation of the poor from 
the tyranny and degradation of the loan shark. 
It will also make large long-time loans to 
young men and women who desire to marry 
and start homes, in order to enable them to 
become the owners of houses. It will permit 
them to repay the loan on the amortization 
plan. No community could render a more 



24 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

statesmanlike service to its members. The 
service already rendered by building and loan 
associations, which are in fact cooperative 
banks, is a guarantee of the success of the plan. 
There are in the United States 7,034 such asso- 
ciations, with a membership of 3,568,342, and 
assets amounting to $1,696,707,041. These 
figues are eloquent and tell a significant story. 
They show how ready is the response of men 
to the opportunity of owning their own houses 
and that this opportunity needs to be vastly ex- 
tended. The motto of the United States 
league of these associations is "The American 
Home, the Safeguard of American Liberties." 
The motto is both sentimental and accurately 
true. The well-being of a nation depends pri- 
marily upon the existence of conditions under 
which family life may be promoted and fos- 
tered. The family is the true social unit, 
older than church or state and more important 
than either. The welfare of family life is 
every statesman's chief concern. 

The community bank enters not only a 
vitally important but a practically unoccupied 
field, and will meet felt needs unmet at pres- 
ent. The cooperative handling of credit is 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 25 

not new. It has been done in Europe for 50 
years with marked success. The community 
bank is the adaptation to American conditions 
of the Raiffeisen Bank of Germany, the Luz- 
zatti Bank of Italy, and the Government Bank 
of New Zealand. It is a democratic bank; 
that is, it is of the people, in that it receives 
the people's money; it is by the people, in that 
it is operated by the people themselves; it is 
for the people, in that the money is used for 
the welfare of the people who saved it. 

A community bank's ability to render these 
needed public services depends wholly on the 
people's desire and capacity to save and their 
willingness to pool their savings. To culti- 
vate the habit of thrift is the first necessity. 
That America needs to acquire this habit is too 
obvious to need comment. Americans are the 
least provident of peoples. Compared with 
a list of 14 other nations, the number of people 
out of every thousand who have savings ac- 
counts is only about one-sixth as many in 
America as in the nation highest on this list, 
and less than one-half as many as in the nation 
lowest on the list. Switzerland stands high- 
est, with 554. Denmark is next, with 442. 



26 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

The lowest is Italy, with 220. But in America 
it is only 99. 

The economic welfare of a community, 
however, is not the most important result 
which the habit of thrift produces. Since 
money is the commonest representative of 
value and a symbol of the property sense, it is 
the best practical means of moral culture. A 
community bank will furnish the best antidote 
for the common desire to get something for 
nothing, ^'the determination of the ownership 
of property by appeal to chance," the habit of 
gambling, which is distorting the moral sense 
of all classes of people. 

The community bank is designed to promote 
an ethical view of money. When we consider 
that if a man earns $100 for a month's labor he 
has put into this money his physical force, his 
nervous energy, his brain power, that part of 
his life has been given away in return for it, 
then money becomes a sacred thing. When 
we consider the humiliation and suffering of a 
destitute old age entailed by a lack of economy, 
then the need of thrift assumes a new sig- 
nificance. When one considers how manifold 
are the bearings of money on the lives of men, 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 27 

and how many are the virtues with which 
money is mixed up — honesty, justice, gener- 
osity, frugality, forethought, and self-sacrifice 
— an ethical view of it is unescapable. 

A small competency is necessary to make 
life what it ought to be for every man, espe- 
cially in a democracy. "Whoever has six- 
pence," said Carlyle, "is sovereign over all to 
the extent of that sixpence; commands cooks 
to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings 
to mount guard over him, to the extent of that 
sixpence." An assured competence, however 
small, gives the priceless blessing of inde- 
pendence. Not only personal health and 
happiness, but social and political independ- 
ence are involved in a man's saving fund. 
The kind and amount of service which a com- 
munity bank can render to democratic ideals is 
beyond calculation. 

THE COOPERATIVE EXCHANGE 
The fundamental aim of the community- 
center movement is to secure cooperation for 
the common welfare. But if cooperation is to 
be anything more than a beautiful dream, there 
must be cooperation about something. It 



28 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

must not only be good, but be good for some- 
thing. When the spirit of cooperation has 
been created, it must have an outlet in action, 
for to stir up the emotions and give them no 
outlet is mere sentimentality and is dangerous 
to moral health. 

This principle is at once the reason and im- 
pulse back of the cooperative enterprises now 
carried on in schools. They assume a great 
variety of forms. Sometimes it is a cooper- 
ative creamery and cheese factory, which in 
some rural sections has meant new hope and 
larger resources, not only for the school, but 
also for the homes of the community. Some- 
times it is a farmers' club for the purchase of 
farm supplies. It may be a canning club in 
which the women meet in the school to pre- 
serve fruits and vegetables and sell them at 
cost, in order to raise funds for community 
uses, or for the national Red Cross. It may 
be a housekeepers' alliance, in which the 
women meet to exchange ideas as to the best 
methods of buying and preparing foods. In 
one community center the people have agreed 
to get their milk from one source and to pay 
for it in advance, in order to eliminate the 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 29 

wastes in distribution and receive the benefit of 
the money thus saved. For the successful 
handling of farm products it is essential that 
they be standardized both in form and quality. 
For this purpose it v^ould be v^ell to use a 
trademark or label, which would be of psycho- 
logical value in suggesting teamwork, and also 
be a guarantee of quality. 

All of these activities are now in the process 
of being grouped together under a buying 
club, or cooperative exchange, for the organ- 
ization of which there is a rapidly growing 
demand. The State of North Carolina has 
already passed a law authorizing communities 
to organize them in the schoolhouses. Co- 
operative buying and banking has been ope- 
rated with notable success for 50 years in 
England, Denmark, and other countries. It 
has met little success as yet in America, be- 
cause Americans have been too rich and too 
individualistic. There seems to be an obvious 
need for an intermediate step between un- 
limited competition and the European type of 
cooperative society. It seems probable that 
this need will be supplied by the buying club. 
It is not a shop in the English sense, nor a 



30 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

store in the modern sense, but a store in the 
original American sense — that is, a store- 
house, a distribution station for goods kept in 
their original containers. Indeed, for the 
most part no goods need to be kept in the 
schoolhouse at all. The schoolhousc is used 
chiefly for the stimulation and formation of 
plans of operation. 

Three things are necessary to success in any 
practical cooperative enterprise — a desire to 
save, good business sense, and the spirit of 
cooperation; of these the greatest is the last, 
because cooperation is primarily a state of 
mind; it is a matter of education. It is sig- 
nificant that the cooperative societies of Eng- 
land not only gave the name "society" to their 
organization, but also devote 2^^ per cent of 
their annual profits to the education of their 
members in the principle and practice of 
cooperation. 

Thus there grew up in these stores real 
social-center activities. In America social 
and civic activities are already started in the 
schoolhouses, and out of them practical 
cooperation is now developing. Our ap- 
proach is the reverse of the English expe- 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 31 

rience, but the principle is the same. It is 
highly important to see clearly that the other 
community-center activities are an educational 
necessity to the success of its practical cooper- 
ative enterprises. A buying club unattached 
to the means of creating the cooperative spirit 
is almost sure to fail. 

It will save time to recognize at the begin- 
ning that to acquire the spirit and method of 
cooperation is a slow^ process of education. 
The chief danger to be guarded against is the 
common tendency on the part of Americans to 
demand fruit the day the tree is planted. 
While the spirit of cooperation is difficult to 
acquire, like all other good things, yet it is 
v^orth all it costs. Cooperation in buying and 
banking is itself the best means for moral cul- 
ture. Its educational value is of the highest. 
It minimizes the evils of debt, cultivates self- 
control and self-reliance, checks reckless ex- 
penditures, develops a sense of responsibility, 
quickens intelligence and a public spirit, and 
prepares citizens for self-government in a 
democratic state. The schoolhouse is not only 
the appropriate place to acquire these educa- 
tional values and cooperative virtues, but it 



32 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

also furnishes the inspiration for success in the 
process, because the American public school 
is itself the most successful social enterprise 
yet undertaken in this or any other nation. 

THE child's right OF WAY 

It is because there exists in America a 
marked degree of independence and initiative, 
and consequently a wide divergence in local 
conditions, that community centers differ 
widely in the kind and number of their ac- 
tivities. While variety in unity is the demo- 
cratic law of development, yet unity in variety 
is the other half of the same law. There 
are certain kinds of activities required by 
universal human needs. The activities herein 
described are the typical activities adapted to 
the average normal community, both rural and 
urban. If then one were asked what a com- 
munity center aims to be, it is a sufficiently full 
and accurate answer to say that it is, what has 
just been briefly described, a people's univer- 
sity, a community capitol, a forum, a neigh- 
borhood club, a home-and-school league, a 
community bank, and a cooperative exchange. 
It is all of these in one organization. The 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 33 

unity among them is vital and organic like 
the unity of the fingers in a hand. 

Whatever the number and variety of ac- 
tivities undertaken, the distinguishing mark of 
the community center is the fact that it is or- 
ganized not on the basis of personal pleasure 
or private profit or any political or religious 
creed, but on the basis of responsibility for the 
v^elfare of children. The "house of the peo- 
ple" in which it meets is the symbol of its cen- 
tral idea. The public school is the only 
national institution primarily dedicated to the 
welfare of the child. 

Here as nowhere else men and women forget 
their partisan and sectarian divisions and 
breathe an atmosphere which accentuates their 
resemblances and minimizes their dififerences. 
Childhood is the ground floor of life. It takes 
us beneath all superficial and artificial distinc- 
tions. 

Centuries ago a great statesman and phil- 
osopher said that the key to any right solution 
of our social and economic problems is to be 
found by "setting the child in the midst of 
them." Jesus regarded the child as the model 
citizen in the Kingdom of God, which was his 



34 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

term for democracy. The child is still the 
most respectable citizen we have. The posi- 
tion of Jesus on the place of the child has been 
shown by John Fiske to be abundantly sup- 
ported by the biological history of the race. 
The prolonged infancy of the human baby is 
the factor which developed motherhood and 
all our altruistic sentiments. And it will be 
by keeping the child in the midst of our 
thought, by giving the child the right of way 
in our economics, by making the child's wel- 
fare the formative principle in our social and 
civic activities that we will transform these 
activities into community interests. 

This the community center aims to do. In 
brief, it is a movement for the extension of the 
spirit of the home and fireside, the spirit of 
childhood, of good will, of intelligent sym- 
pathy, of mutual aid — the extension of this 
spirit to all the activities of the community. 
The indispensable importance of this spirit 
can not be overemphasized, for without it a 
community center is a body without a soul, and 
a body without a soul is not a living thing. A 
community center's capacity to produce prac- 
tical results is always to be measured by its 



A COMMUNITY CENTER 35 

capacity to create such a spirit. For, as John 
Dewey wisely says : 

The chief constituent of social efficiency is intelligent 
sympathy or good will. For sympathy, as a desirable 
quality, is something more than mere feeling. It is a cul- 
tivated imagination for what men have in common and a 
rebellion at whatever unnecessarily divides them. 



PART II 

HOW TO ORGANIZE A COMMUNITY 
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HOW TO ORGANIZE A COMMUNITY 
CENTER 

What needs to be done is fairly clear; how 
to do it is the difficult thing. "If," said the 
shrewd Portia, "to do were as easy as to know 
what were good to do, chapels had been 
churches and poor men's cottages princes' 
palaces." Nevertheless, to discover how, 
while difficult, it is an inspiring task. In the 
organization of a community center the essen- 
tial factors to be considered are its member- 
ship, its size, its executive officer, its board of 
directors, its finances, and its constitution. 
The suggestions here offered concerning them, 
together with the reasons for the suggestions, 
are the product of experience and have been 
tested in operation. 

A LITTLE DEMOCRACY 

The organization of a community around 

the schoolhouse as its capitol is the creation of 

a new political unit, a little democracy. It is 

new in the sense that it is the revival and en- 

39 



40 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

largement of an old institution that we ought 
not willingly to let die. Thomas Jefferson did 
not exaggerate when he said : 

Those wards called townships fn New England are the 
vital principle of their governments, and have proved 
themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit 
of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for 
its preservation. * * * As Cato, then, concluded every 
speech with the words, "Carthago delenda est," so do I 
conclude every opinion with the injunction, "Divide the 
counties into wards.'' 

The movement to organize local self-gov- 
erning communities takes us back not only to 
the New England town meeting but still fur- 
ther back to the Teutonic ''mark," the Russian 
"mir," and to the ancient Swiss cantonal as- 
sembly. The fact that free village commun- 
ities in some form have existed in so many 
parts of the world is a significant indication of 
a universal conviction that such organization 
is a necessity to human welfare. 

The community center aims to form such a 
free village community, a town, a borough, a 
little democracy, both in the cities and the 
open country. Its capitol, or headquarters, is 
the schoolhouse, because this is the most 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 41 

American institution and the only one suitable 
for the purpose. It alone provides a place 
where all can meet on equal terms of self- 
respect. It is conveniently distributed in 
every city, town, and village in America. The 
term "center" applies to the schoolhouse, the 
place of meeting. The term applied to the 
organization of the people themselves is '^com- 
munity association." 

The first step in organization is to define 
the boundaries of the community. These 
ought to be determined along natural lines, 
such as the territory from which the children 
in the school are drawn, or a district in which 
the people come together for other reasons 
than the fact that an artificial line is drawn 
around them. It ought not to be too large. 

Being a little democracy, all adult citizens, 
both men and women, living in the prescribed 
territory are members of it. It must be com- 
prehensive if the public schoolhouse is to be 
used as its capitol. It must be nonpartisan, 
nonsectarian, and nonexclusive. You do not 
become a member of a community center by 
joining. You are a member by virtue of your 
citizenship and residence in the district. 



42 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

Everywhere else men and women are divided 
into groups and classes on the ground of their 
personal taste or occupation. In a com- 
munity center they meet as "folks" on the 
ground of their common citizenship and their 
common human needs. This is the distin- 
guishing mark of the community center. 

It is quite true that this democratic ideal is 
difficult to operate. That is nothing against 
it. All worth-while ideals are difficult. 
Fisher Ames says, "A monarchy is a merchant- 
man which sails well but will sometimes strike 
a rock and go to the bottom, whilst a republic 
is a raft which will never sink, but then your 
feet are always in the water." Let us grant 
that it may be even hot water, but it is quite 
as true that the very difficulty in operating the 
democratic ideal constitutes its fascination and 
its worth. When a thing becomes easy of ac- 
complishment it loses much, both of its value 
and its interest. 

MEMBERSHIP IN AMERICA 
It is possible for the form of democracy to 
exist without its spirit and method. The term 
''community'^ ;s not merely ''a geographical 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 43 

expression." It applies not only to a geo- 
graphical area, but embodies an idea. Its real 
content includes the spirit and method of 
democracy. Unless it promotes this spiritual 
ideal its meaning is of small value. The Cen- 
tury Dictionary quotes the Attorney General of 
the United States as saying, "The phrase, 'a 
citizen of the United States' without addition 
or qualification means neither more nor less 
than a member of the Nation." 

Membership implies obligation and respon- 
sibility. It gives not only a new sense of pride, 
but an intimate feeling of duty to the common 
welfare, for a man to say to himself, ^T am a 
member of America." To make citizenship 
mean membership is one of the obvious needs 
in every community. The outstanding char- 
acteristic of the American Republic, which is 
unlike any other in the world, is that it is a 
double government, a double allegiance. It 
is a "Republic of republics." Every citizen 
feels two loyalties — one to his State and the 
other to his Nation. In addition to these two 
he feels a third loyalty. It is to his local com- 
munity. And just as every man is a better 
citizen if he is first of all devoted to his own 



44 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

family, so will he be more loyal to the State 
and Nation if he is loyal to his own com- 
munity. 

To induce citizens to recognize their re- 
sponsibility for the administration of public 
business, to become active members of their 
own communities, to assist in the improvement 
of local schools, of politics, of roads, of the 
general health, of housing conditions — this is 
the result which the community center aims to 
achieve. It is the law of all improvement 
that you must start from where you are. If a 
man can not love his own community, which 
he can see, how can he love the whole country, 
which he can not see? 

The success of the work in any community 
depends on the amount of public-mindedness 
existing there or the possibility of creating it. 
Those who undertake community-center work 
ought to guard themselves against the danger 
of expecting too much at the start. To de- 
velop public-mindedness is a slow and difficult 
task. It ought never to be forgotten that 
democracy, like liberty, is not an accomplish- 
ment but a growth, not an act but a process. 

It is of the highest importance that this fact 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 45 

should be perceived by pioneers in community 
work, in order that they may not be deceived 
by the passion for size and numbers. A dozen 
public-minded persons are sufficient for a be- 
ginning. One of the biggest movements in 
history began v^ith a little circle of 12 men. 

They who have discovered the meaning of 
democracy do not need large immediate results 
to keep up their courage; they only need a 
cause; and the greatest of all causes is con- 
structive democracy. The people will re- 
spond when they understand. In the entire 
history of the community-center movement 
there has never been a time more than now 
when they were so ready to respond. Let no 
worker in any community despise small begin- 
nings. It is always better to begin small and 
grow big than to begin big and grow small. 

THE COMMUNITY SECRETARY 
Nothing runs itself unless it is running down 
hill. If community work is to be done, some- 
body has to be the doer of it. The growing 
realization of this fact has led to the creation 
of a new profession. The term applied to this 
profession is ^^community secretary," "a 



46 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

keeper of secrets," a servant of the whole com- 
munity. This community executive should be 
elected by ballot in a public election held in 
the schoolhouse and supported out of public 
funds. There are now four such publicly 
elected and publicly supported community 
secretaries in Washington, D. C, and eight 
more such offices are in the process of being 
created. It seems certain that it is destined 
to be one of the most honored and useful of 
all public offices. Its ideal was expressed by 
the ''first real democrat in history," when he 
said, ''The kings of the Gentiles are their mas- 
ters, and those who exercise authority over 
them are called benefactors. With you it is 
not so; but let the greatest among you be as 
the younger, and the leader be like him who 
serves." 

The qualifications for this office are mani- 
festly large, and its duties complex and exact- 
ing. The ablest person to be found is none too 
able. The function of the secretary is nothing 
less than to organize and to keep organized all 
the community activities herein described; to 
assist the people to learn the science and to 
practice the art of living together; and to show 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 47 

them how they may put into effective opera- 
tion the spirit and method of cooperation. 
Who is equal to a task like this? In addition 
to intellectual power and a large store of gen- 
eral information, one must be equipped with 
many more qualities equally important. The 
seven cardinal virtues of a community secre- 
tary are: Patience, unselfishness, a sense of 
Humor, a balanced judgment, the ability to 
difler in opinion without differing in feeling, 
respect for the personality of other people, and 
faith in the good intentions of the average 
man. When one considers the requirements 
for this office, one's first impulse is to do what 
King Solomon did. After making a rarely 
beautiful description of a wise and ideal wife, 
he ended it by asking, ^'but where can such a 
woman be found?" 

There will be no dearth of able men and 
women to fill this office, when once it is prop- 
erly created and adequately supported. For 
there is a particular satisfaction, not other- 
wise obtainable, to be derived from the service 
of a cause bigger than one's personal interests. 
Where possible, the community secretary 
ought to be the principal of the school. But 



48 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

where the principal can not be released from 
his other duties sufficiently to undertake the 
work, the secretary ought to be a person who is 
agreeable to the principal, in order to insure 
concerted action. In thousands of villages 
and open-country communities the teacher's 
work lasts for only part of the year and the 
compensation is shamefully inadequate. This 
is a great economic waste as well as an injury 
to children. If these teachers were made 
community secretaries, were given an all-year- 
round job and were compensated for the addi- 
tional work by a living wage, it would mean a 
better type of teacher and a better type of 
school. The bigger task would not only de- 
mand the bigger person, but the task itself 
would create them. Moreover, when the 
teacher's activities become linked up with life 
processes the community will be the more will- 
ing to support the office adequately. It seems 
clear that the office of community secretary is 
the key to a worthier support of the school. 
It will magnify the function of teaching, 
give a new civic status to the teacher, and 
make more apparent the patriotic and con- 



\y 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 49 

structive service which the school renders the 
nation. 

While the demands, which this new profes- 
sion makes, may seem discouragingly high, 
nevertheless therein lie its merit and charm. 
'^Our reach should exceed our grasp," or 
there is no opportunity for growth. The posi- 
tion is so big that it can not be outgrown. It 
is worthy of any one's life-time loyalty. A 
change to any other vocation is not a promo- 
tion. A teacher who is a community secre- 
tary, or who is associated with one in com- 
munity work, is justified in having the same 
degree of self-respect and exalted regard for 
the worth of his work which was expressed by 
a great pioneer in the same field, Pestalozzi. 
At one period of his career, he went to Paris, 
and a friend endeavored to present him to 
Napoleon the Great. Napoleon declined. 
"I have no time for A. B. C," he said. 
When Pestalozzi returned to his home his 
friends asked him, '^Did you see Napoleon the 
Great?" ''No; I did not see Napoleon the 
Great, and Napoleon the Great did not see 
me." 



50 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS 

However able a community secretary may 
be, no one alone is able enough for the con- 
structive kind of work which the community 
center requires. Since it is a cooperative en- 
terprise, it is necessary that it be democrati- 
cally organized. The next step in its organ- 
ization, therefore, should be to provide the 
secretary with a cabinet. It may be called a 
board of directors, or a community council, or 
an executive committee. These names sug- 
gest its various functions. Its first function is 
to give council and advice to the community 
secretary, to act as a little forum for discus- 
sion, out of which may develop wise methods 
of procedure. Its next function is to share 
with the secretary the responsibility for the 
work, the burden of which is too heavy to be 
borne by any one alone. But the cabinet is not 
a legislative body alone to determine what is to 
be done, but also an executive body as well. 
It is not only an executive body, to carry out 
the general plans of the association, but also a 
body of directors to plan and conduct special 
kinds of activities. In every community there 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 51 

are men and women who have the ability and 
leisure to render public service. As directors 
they would have a recognized position and 
channel through which they can more effec- 
tively render such service. 

Each director ought to be the head of a de- 
partment of work, or at least the head of every 
department of work ought to be a director. 
The head of each department ought to choose 
the members of his own committee. Thus by 
having the heads of departments of work on 
the board of directors, the entire work of the 
association can be frequently reviewed, and the 
departments of activity can, by cooperating, 
not only avoid needless waste through dupli- 
cation, but also stimulate each other. The 
board of directors ought to hold regular meet- 
ings in the schoolhouse, and in order that the 
work may be responsive to public opinion the 
meetings ought to be open to any who wish to 
attend them, just as the meetings of a town 
council are open. The community center 
stands for visible government, and daylight 
diplomacy. 

In the conduct of the association's activities 
a large measure of freedom ought to be granted 



52 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

the directors as well as the secretary. There 
can be no responsibility without freedom. 
The test of democracy is its willingness to 
trust its leaders. It is a test which democ- 
racies find it difficult to measure up to. The 
association ought to hold its officials to strict 
accountability, and it has the power to recall 
and replace them, but while they are in office 
and bear the responsibility they ought to be 
given freedom to use the means and methods 
which in their judgment are best suited to 
produce the results expected of them. The 
question here raised by democracy is not the 
extent of authority but its source. The prin- 
ciple of democracy is preserved if the source 
of authority is limited; the efficiency of 
democracy is secured if the extent of authority 
is enlarged. 

The directors in community-center work 
will not only feel the need of taking counsel 
with each other, but also of getting suggestions 
from other communities. In every city and 
county, the community associations would do 
wisely to form a league for the purpose of 
pooling their experience and helping each 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 53 

other in what is manifestly a difficult task. In 
such a conference the representatives of local 
communities would discover that there may be 
many good roads leading to the same goal. 
Moreover, while it is possible to agree on our 
goal, it is rarely possible to agree on the 
methods of reaching it. No principle is more 
important to observe in conducting community 
work. If, then, we can agree on our goal, we 
may well spare criticism on our fellows who 
travel a road different from ours. 

THE TROUBLE COMMITTEE 
It is not SO difficult to organize a community 
center; the difficulty is to keep it organized. 
By no means the only one, but the chief means 
of securing a permanently useful community 
center is to have a wise and constructive pro- 
gram, big enough to merit interest. A good 
way to formulate such a program is to appoint 
a permanent committee which we may call 
''the trouble committee." The function of 
this committee is not to make trouble, but to 
remove it. Its task is to discover the causes 
of trouble in the community, to learn the rea- 



54 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

sons for dissatisfaction, to state the problems 
which ought to be solved, to exhibit the thing 
that needs to be done. 

A community center can get helpful sugges- 
tions concerning programs from State uni- 
versities or extension committees, and it v^ill 
naturally want to discuss the questions promi- 
nently in the public mind, but the most inter- 
esting and constructive program is the attempt 
to improve conditions of living on its home 
soil. In such a program the first thing needed 
preparatory to action is diagnosis. Problem 
making is almost as important as problem 
solving. To know what the problem is, is 
half the battle. When the terms of a prob- 
lem are accurately stated, the problem itself 
is partly solved in the process. It was a fre- 
quent experience of Lincoln that, after he had 
stated the facts of a case in court, the trial of 
it was arrested and called ofif. 

The work of the trouble committee is prob- 
lem making. For example, why are country- 
bred boys leaving the farm in such large num- 
bers; is farming a profitable industry; to what 
extent is the food of the country produced by 
the unpaid labor of children; does it pay bet- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 55 

ter to rent or to own a farm; could an average 
young man earn enough from a farm to pay for 
it by honest labor in a reasonable number of 
years; why do half the girls and boys fail to 
finish the grammar grades in school; is the 
work of transportation and distribution of 
food supplies economically done; why is the 
cost of living so high? If any community 
center should attempt to discover the causes of 
these unsatisfactory conditions, it would be a 
vital and attractive program sufficient to oc- 
cupy it for several years. 

The function of the trouble committee is to 
furnish nuts for the community association to 
crack. No one believes in diagnosis for the 
sake of diagnosis any more than he believes in 
^'amputation for the sake of amputation." Its 
only use is to reveal the disease and to point 
the way to a remedy. The aim of the trouble 
committee is to point out the difficulties at the 
bottom of our social problems for the sake of 
removing them. Whenever they are re- 
moved, the problem vanishes. The method 
of the committee is constructive democracy. 

No community, however, ought to assume 
that it can solve all of its problems, at least, not 



56 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

speedily. ^'We are not born," said Goethe, 
"to solve the problems of the world but to find 
out where the problems begin, and then to 
keep within the limits of what we can grasp»" 
This is a luminous remark, and the trouble 
committee merely assumes that in treating any 
problem the place to begin is at the beginning 
of it, and that the beginning of it is its cause. 
It assumes that ''there is no alleviation for 
the suffering of mankind except veracity of 
thought and action, and the resolute facing of 
the world as it is." It assumes that it is not 
possible to purify the water in a well by paint- 
ing the pump. It is painful to think how 
much social energy has been wasted in this 
process. No community center whose pro- 
gram is limited to painting the pump can 
either win or long hold the support of thought- 
ful men and women. Nor does it deserve to. 
The test of sanity used in some asylums is to 
take the patient to a trough partially filled and 
into which an open spigot is pouring new sup- 
plies of water. The patient is asked to bail 
the water out of the trough. If he attempts 
to do so without first turning off the flow he is 
regarded as insane, and properly so. It is ob- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 57 

viously sane to turn off the spigot, to remove 
the causes of disorder, if we ever expect to pro- 
duce a social order in harmony with the intel- 
ligence and conscience of the Nation. This 
is the purpose and function of the trouble com- 
mittee. For the most part, this committee 
holds the key to the success or failure of a 
community center. 

PUBLIC AND SELF-SUPPORT 
The finances of an organization usually con- 
stitute its storm center. Money is the kind of 
thing it is difficult to get along with and im- 
possible to get along without. After a com- 
munity center determines its plans and poli- 
cies, the next question in its organization is 
finance. But since money is the root of so 
much trouble, it ought to be kept in the back- 
ground. It is properly called "ways and 
means." It is not the end; human welfare is 
the end. Money is a detail, and ought always 
to be treated as such. 

The superior advantage of a community 
center over private organizations is that it does 
not need an amount of money sufficient to 
cause it any distress. To begin with, there 



58 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

are no dues. They are already paid when the 
taxes are paid. The schoolhouse, together 
with heat, light, and janitor service, and in 
some places a portion of the secretary's sal- 
ary, is provided out of public funds. Thus 
the overhead charges are comparatively very 
small. The time will doubtless come when 
the entire expense will be provided out of pub- 
lic funds, but the movement is new; and for 
the present and immediate future, if the build- 
ing, heat, light, and janitor service are pro- 
vided, it is all that can reasonably be expected. 
The community center needs, for the pres- 
ent, to supplement its public funds. The 
highest salary paid out of public funds to a 
community secretary in Washington, D. C, is 
$420 per year. This is not a salary, but a 
contribution toward a salary. This amount 
must be increased if we can hope ever to se- 
cure and retain the right type of person for 
this position. Then there is the stationery, 
postage, printing, and clerical work. How 
are these needs to be met? The only way is 
by voluntary effort. Each department of ac- 
tivity ought to be self-supporting. Those de- 
partments, like the buying club and the bank. 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 59 

which have an income ought to contribute a 
certain regular percentage to the association 
as a whole, because its general activities are 
necessary to the success of these departments. 
This percentage should be considered part of 
the necessary operating expenses of each de- 
partment. The members of the community 
association ought to register to indicate their 
intention to take an active part in its affairs. 
When they do, a small registration fee should 
be charged. 

These two sources will doubtless net suf- 
ficient funds. If they do not, then voluntary 
contributions and entertainments should fur- 
nish what is needed. It ought to be clearly 
noted that for a community center to raise part 
of its funds by voluntary effort does not mean 
that it is privately supported. The commun- 
ity association is a public body. As such, 
what money it raises is public money. It is 
not private support, but voluntary self-help. 
In a community center, public support and 
self-support are one and the same thing. 
Since the amount needed to be raised by vol- 
untary effort is smaller than the amount re- 
ceived from public funds, there is little dan- 



6o A COMMUNITY CENTER 

ger that large givers will have the opportun- 
ity to dominate the policies of the community 
center through their gifts. Above all others, 
this is the one danger most to be guarded 
against. Because it is chiefly supported by 
public taxation, the community center is a 
place where all can meet on the basis of self- 
respect, where a man's standing is determined 
not by gifts of money, but by character and 
intelligence. Whenever this condition ceases 
to exist, the community center dies. 

But so long as the finances are organized 
democratically, the need for the community 
itself to raise part of its fund is a moral ad- 
vantage and is social justice. For until pub- 
lic opinion becomes informed and unified, a 
city or county must be fair to all its communi- 
ties. To compel one community, without its 
consent, to support the activities of another is 
manifestly unjust and undemocratic. Whit- 
man's definition of democracy, ^^I will have 
nothing which every other man may not have 
the counterpart of on like terms," is our guid- 
ing principle in community finances. For a 
community to raise part of its funds is not 
only social justice to other communities but a 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 6i 

benefit to the community itself. The com- 
munity center is an enterprise for mutual aid 
in self-development The process of raising 
part of its own funds is one of the means of 
such development. The people are com- 
pelled to pay taxes, but what they freely choose 
to contribute to their own enterprise is the 
only trustworthy guide to their attitude toward 
it and the best stimulus of their devotion to it. 
There can be self-development only where 
there is freedom. Partial voluntary support 
by a community insures local autonomy. 
"Democracy," says Bertrand Russell, ^4s a de- 
vice — the best so far invented — for diminish- 
ing the interference of governments with lib- 
erty." But political freedom is conditioned 
upon financial freedom. A degree of self- 
support, therefore, frees a community from 
the domination of city and county govern- 
ments. These considerations, if accepted as 
true, convert apparent burdens into blessings 
and weights into wings. 

A WORKING CONSTITUTION 

What's a constitution among friends? It's 
a necessity if they are to continue to be friends. 



62 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

As the word itself suggests, a constitution es- 
tablishes the basis on which friends may stand 
for the accomplishment of their common pur- 
poses. Its value is always to be measured by 
the importance of the purpose to be accom- 
plished. Inasmuch as the purpose of a com- 
munity center is of the highest value not only 
to the welfare of the local community, but also 
to the welfare of democracy in the Nation and 
in the world, the making of its constitution is a 
highly important item in its organization. 
''If democracy," said Havelock Ellis, "means 
a state in which every man shall be a freeman, 
neither in economic, nor intellectual, nor 
moral subjection, two processes at least 
are necessary to render democracy possible; 
on the one hand, a large and many-sided edu- 
cation; on the other, the reasonable organiza- 
tion of life" — nothing less than to state how 
these two objects may be secured is the purpose 
of the constitution of a community center. 

It will thus be seen that this constitution is 
very different from that of an ordinary society, 
which merely aims to give information about 
officers and meetings. This one may deeply 
affect the spiritual and economic life of a com- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 63 

munity. As the expression of certain ideas in 
a document known as "Magna charta," was a 
great gain in the long fight for freedom in the 
English-speaking world, so the expression of 
a community's new social purpose may mean 
new freedom for it. 

As regards the work of the community cen- 
ter, the constitution is a working agreement, 
a clear understanding as to what is to be done 
and who is to do it. A clear statement will 
prevent needless friction and confusion. As 
regards the growth of the work in the com- 
munity, the constitution will serve the purpose 
of propaganda. If a new or uninformed 
member of the community should ask an ac- 
tive member, ''What is a community center 
and what is its purpose?" a copy of the consti- 
tution ought to furnish a full answer to his 
question. Therefore, it should not be too 
brief, if it is to serve this purpose. 

Each community ought to draft its own con- 
stitution, not only because the needs of com- 
munities vary, and not only because it should 
be the honest expression of the community's 
own thought and purpose, but especially be- 
cause a constitution brought from outside and 



64 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

dropped on the people's heads has little value 
for the community. Of course, it is possible 
for a community to work over and assimilate 
another community's constitution until it be- 
comes its own. It ought also to get help and 
suggestions from as many constitutions as it 
can find. For this reason there will be found 
in Part IV the copy of a constitution which 
the writer prepared to meet the needs of the 
Wilson Normal Community in Washington, 
D. C, his own community. It was patiently 
considered in committee and thoroughly dis- 
cussed in public meetings. It is now in oper- 
ation. 

It is better for the people to make their 
own, either by creating a new one or adapting 
others to their needs, even if it is not as well 
done as somebody else could do it for them. 
In starting a community center an organizing 
committee should be charged with the task of 
drafting and submitting a constitution. If 
several weeks were spent on the task both in 
committee work and in public discussion, the 
time would be well spent. The educational 
value of the process is too great for the people 
to miss. The process would educate a con- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 65 

siderable number who will grasp the meaning 
of a community center and who will therefore 
be equipped to a degree for conducting its 
work. 

While the types of constitutions will be very 
various, yet there are certain formative prin- 
ciples which are basic in the structure of a 
community center. They are so essential to 
the life of the community ideal that the writer 
has called them "The ten commandments for a 
community center." They are as follows: 

I. It must guarantee freedom of thought 

and freedom in its expression. 
II. It must aim at unity, not uniformity, 
and accentuate resemblances, not dif- 
ferences. 

III. It must be organized democratically, 

with the right to learn by making 
mistakes. 

IV. It must be free from the domination of 

money, giving the right of way to 
character and intelligence. 
V. It must be nonpartisan, nonsectarian, 
and nonexclusive both in purpose 
and practice. 



66 . A COMMUNITY CENTER 

VI. Remember that nothing will run itself 
unless it is running down hill. 
VII. Remember that to get anywhere, it is 
necessary to start from where you are. 
VIII. Remember that the thing to be done is 
more important than the method of 
doing it. 
IX. Remember that the water in a well can 
not be purified by painting the pump. 
X. Remember that progress is possible 
only when there is mental hospitality 
to new ideas. 

DECREASE OF ORGANIZATIONS 
Edward Everett Hale reported Louis Agas- 
siz as saying that, when he came to America, 
one of the amazing things he discovered was 
that no set of men could get together to do any- 
thing, though there were but five of them, un- 
less they first drew up a constitution. If lo 
botanists, he said, met in a hotel in Switzer- 
land to hear a paper read, they would sit down 
and hear it. But if American botanists meet 
for the same purpose, they spend the first day 
in forming an organization, appointing a com- 
mittee to draw a constitution, correcting the 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 67 

draft made by them, appointing a committee 
to nominate officers, and then choosing a pres- 
ident, vice president, two secretaries, and a 
treasurer. This takes all the first day. If any 
of these people are fools enough or wise 
enough — ^'persistent" is the modern word — to 
come the next day, all will be well. They will 
hear the paper on botany. This is a good- 
natured, but well-deserved, criticism of the 
common tendency to start a new organization 
if any one has an idea he wishes to propagate. 

The resulting damage of a multiplicity of 
organizations is that so much energy is con- 
sumed in the work of organizing that there is 
not enough left to operate them. It is like the 
steamboat of Lincoln's story, with a 7-foot 
whistle and a 5-foot boiler. Every time the 
whistle blew, the engine had to stop running. 

There now exist over 80 separate organiza- 
tions for the purpose of supplying some kind 
of war relief. Many of them have already 
applied and more doubtless will apply for 
permission to use the public schools to advance 
their various causes. It would be nothing 
short of a public benefaction if some device 
could be found to decrease the present number 



68 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

of organizations and prevent the inexcusable 
economic waste due to the duplication of ac- 
tivities. It is because we have so many or- 
ganizations (plural) that we need more or- 
ganization (singular) as a cure for this need- 
less waste. 

The community center is such a device. It 
can perform this function because it is a com- 
prehensive organization. The center of any 
American community is the free public school, 
the only center it has. The community cen- 
ter is not a rival, but an ally, of other organiza- 
tions. It is more; it is their foster mother; 
it is the matrix which gives them their setting. 
It embraces them as departmental activities. 
It is a coordinating instrument. It is a bureau 
of community service. Both its spirit and 
method are well stated in the lines of Edwin 
Markham, which he appropriately calls '^Out- 
witted" : 

. He drew a circle which shut me out, 
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout; 
But Love and I had the wit to win, 
We drew a circle that took him in. 

The fact that a community center is the 
community matrix explains why and how it 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 69 

can decrease the number of organizations and 
prevent unnecessary new ones from forming. 
The method of direct attack is not only incon- 
siderate, but is foredoomed to failure. If a 
community center should say to any existing 
organization, ^'We want you deliberately to 
disband, to chloroform yourself," it would de- 
feat its own purpose. Human nature just 
doesn't operate that way. The wiser method 
of the community center is to relate them to 
each other and to itself, as departments of ac- 
tivity, so that duplication may be exhibited as 
social waste. The mere exhibition of this fact 
will induce some organizations voluntarily to 
disband or merge with others. The disease of 
overorganization, like some other diseases, 
only needs, for its cure, exposure to the fresh 
air. The community center furnishes the at- 
mospheric condition of public opinion, in 
which unfit organizations will naturally die 
and the fit survive. The method is both gen- 
tle and just. It treats outgrown organizations 
as we always treat outgrown laws. We do not 
rescind them, we just let them die. 

Just as fair competition in an open field fur- 
nishes the condition under which weak and 



70 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

less worthy organizations die^ likewise it fur- 
nishes the condition under which strong and 
worthy ones thrive and expand. All they ask 
is a fair field and no favors. Their work 
speaks for itself. The civilian relief work of 
the Red Cross is a case in point. The Red 
Cross has enlarged the scope of its activities to 
include not only remedial but constructive 
work. Its policy is not only to cure but to 
prevent disease. Constructive work under the 
noble name and sign of the Red Cross in up- 
building the Nation's strength is so akin to the 
aims of the community center that they ought 
to cooperate in order to save needless social 
waste. They travel the same road ; they ought 
to travel together as comrades. A few coun- 
ties now employ Red Cross public health 
nurses. One State has recently passed a law 
which provides that each of its counties shall 
support out of public funds a nurse for town 
and country service. It is only a question of 
time when a public health nurse will be at- 
tached to every community center. 

The community center is the natural hub of 
a community wheel. It does not claim to be, 
it is necessarily, the comprehensive organiza- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 71 

tion. But Red Cross work ought to be a de- 
partment of the community center. They 
need each other. The community center is in 
a position to open just the kind of a door of 
opportunity which the Red Cross needs for 
the success of its work. There are large 
classes of people who have not enlisted in Red 
Cross work. And yet they have sons in the 
war and are making heroic sacrifices. They 
desire to do war work as they have always 
been willing to do relief and constructive work 
in times of peace. But they will not come to 
fashionable hotels or similar exclusive places. 
For obvious reasons they will come to the 
schoolhouse. If, therefore, Red Cross units 
were organized as departments of community 
centers, the Red Cross could enlist in its serv- 
ice a multitude now outside of its reach, and 
the Red Cross, because of its resources and its 
semiofficial character, could put the aims of 
the community center into operation. The 
opportunity for mutual service is such that it 
would be a statesmanlike move if the Red 
Cross should devote time and money to the 
establishment of community centers as the 
most practical and economical instruments 



72 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

through which to expand its activities. A 
Red Cross unit ought to exist as a department 
of the community center in every school dis- 
trict of the United States. 

The community-center movement and the 
Red Cross have the more reason for uniting 
their strength because the preventive work 
which they both aim to do, while more im- 
portant, is less dramatic and usually attracts 
less popular support. But it is to this kind 
of work that the world gives its verdict of 
approval when the perspective of time en- 
ables it to distinguish between the big and 
the little. It is doubtful whether to-day one 
man in a thousand knows the names of the two 
generals who commanded the opposing armies 
in the Crimean War. Even when they are 
mentioned — Lord Raglan and Gen. Toddle- 
ben — they sound strangely unfamiliar. But 
there was one participant in that war whose 
name is now a household word — Florence 
Nightingale. Yet it was the generals who 
occupied the conspicuous positions; it was 
they who rode horseback and wore showy uni- 
forms; it was they for whom the bands played 
and the soldiers applauded, while this Red 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 73 

Cross nurse did the apparently commonplace 
work of giving cups of cold water to wounded 
soldiers and easing the head of some home- 
sick man as he lay dying. But these wounded 
men kissed her very shadow where it fell. It 
was a healing shadow. Such constructive 
work, even though it consists in little deeds of 
wayside kindness, is work for the ages. Such 
constructive work will be so needed to heal 
the wounds in the social, industrial, and politi- 
cal world in the reconstruction days immedi- 
ately ahead that the community center and the 
Red Cross would do wisely to unite their 
strength, not only to meet the Nation's present 
need but to assist in building a better sort of 
world. The task of the community-center 
movement is at once so difficult and so essen- 
tial for the success of our experiment in de- 
mocracy that it needs the assistance of every 
agency whose aims are similar to its own. In 
helping to create community centers the Red 
Cross would not only be serving itself but ren- 
dering a national service of the highest im- 
portance. 

We are thus equipped with a wise principle 
always to be observed in the organization of a 



74 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

community center. It should adapt itself to 
the organizations already in the field and co- 
operate with them. It does not antagonize 
them but assists them to expand into some- 
thing bigger. It may more speedily reach its 
goal if it would evolve out of some good 
existing organization. A community center 
never loses sight of its ultimate purpose, but it 
does not disdain to make use of the instru- 
ments which lie at its hand because they are 
imperfect. Lincoln applied this principle in 
the policy of reconstruction he had begun. 
Although he was bitterly criticized for it he 
defended it in the last speech he ever made. 
"Concede," he said, "that the new government 
of Louisiana is only, to what it should be, as 
the egg is to the fowl ; we shall sooner have the 
fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it." 

THE HOUSE OF THE PEOPLE 
Whenever an idea gets itself embodied in 
concrete form, visible to the eye, it becomes 
the more potent and persuasive. The reason 
why the ancient and common use of symbols 
renders a distinct service to ideals is obvious. 
Sense impressions received through the eye 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 75 

gate are more vivid and permanent than those 
received through any other gate. We say, ^'in 
one ear and out the other"; we do not say, "in 
one eye and out the other." As an efficient 
means of propaganda, therefore, it is pro- 
foundly important that the community ideal 
should be embodied in a type of school build- 
ing which represents it. If it is to be used as 
a house of the people, it ought to look like a 
house of the people. A community which 
plans to build a new schoolhouse or to adapt 
an old one to new community uses must con- 
sider two questions: First, what are its in- 
ternal needs? Second, what style of building 
best serves these needs? The two questions 
are one and inseparable. They are related to 
each other like a man and his clothes or like 
ideas and the words which express them. 

What are the internal needs and community 
uses which the new type of school buildings is 
required to meet? The essential needs may 
fairly be regarded as seven. They seem to re- 
quire a large expenditure, but from the stand- 
point of community finances the facilities here 
suggested obviously mean a wise economy, be- 
cause they will prevent a needless duplication 



76 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

of buildings. They are used not only for 
school activities, but also for every variety of 
activity by youths and adults. These essen- 
tial facilities are as follow^s: 

1. An assembly room; to be used also for so- 
cial games, folk dances, dinner parties, and 
gymnasium purposes. 

2. Classrooms; to be so arranged that they 
may be used also for departmental activities 
of the community center. 

3. A workshop; to be used also for voca- 
tional night classes and for mechanical experi- 
mental w^ork as recreation. 

4. Library and reading room; to be used 
also as a neighborhood club, conference room, 
and a clearing house for information. 

5. Kitchen and storeroom; to be used also 
for household economics, community dinners, 
and cooperative exchanges. 

6. An open fireplace; to be used for its spir- 
itual value in creating good cheer and the 
neighborly sense of fellow^ship. 

7. Voting instruments; to be erected perma- 
nently and used not only in the curriculum of 
the school and in public elections, but also as 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 77 

a symbol of the aim for which both the school 
and community center stand. 

In addition to these seven practical and typ- 
ical features of a community schoolhouse, 
there is one small luxury which properly may 
be regarded as a necessity. On the lawn of 
every community school should be erected a 
sundial. Its use is not the ordering of the 
day by the sundial rather than the time-table 
in order to stimulate good and honest work; 
nor is its use to act as a reminder of the need 
of leisure for personal growth, although it 
would serve both of these purposes. But its 
chief use is to be the symbol of an idea, with- 
out which a community center can not live. 
Charles Lamb said that if a sundial could talk, 
it would say of itself, '^I count only those hours 
which are serene." It operates only when the 
sun shines. It illustrates the wisdom of look- 
ing on the bright, not the dark side of things; 
of being positive, not negative; of accentuat- 
ing the resemblances, not the differences; of 
cultivating one's admirations, not one's dis- 
gusts. Without the practice of the principle 
of the sundial, the people of the community 



78 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

can never be mobilized for effective concerted 
action and national service. 

In view of patriotic ideals like these which 
the school is designed to serve, the question 
concerning the style of building acquires a new 
and profound significance. What type of ar- 
chitecture most fittingly represents the institu- 
tion most characteristic of the American ideal, 
the community schoolhouse? Two types have 
been generally suggested and widely used. 
They are the colonial and the Tudor or col- 
legiate gothic. Both have real merits, but 
both have defects which seriously handicap 
their use for our purpose. The colonial has 
simple, effective lines, but is cold, rigid, puri- 
tanic, and lacking in joy. Moreover, in its 
more elaborate forms, it was the common type 
used for the elegant mansions of southern aris- 
tocracy. Their pillared porticoes suggest a 
coach and four driving under them. 

The Gothic type has the advantage of be- 
ing more economical to build. Its chief merit 
originally was its ^'rudeness" or imperfection. 
The term "Gothic" was at first a term of re- 
proach, but it acquired honor as men discov- 
ered that every great work ought to be imper- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 79 

feet if it is inspired by an unattainable ideal, 
as it ought to be. For this reason the lines in 
a Gothic building suggest aspiration. The 
distinguishing feature of Gothic architecture 
is that its beautiful ornaments, while always 
aspiring after an unattained perfection, always 
rest on the utilitarian principle of use. The 
flying buttress was not attached to a Gothic 
cathedral as an ornament. It was put there 
to prop up the wall. The pinnacle on its top, 
ornamental as it is, was not put there as an 
ornament. It was put there as a weight to 
keep the prop from slipping off the wall. 

In spite of the obvious and great merits of 
the Gothic type of building, which can and 
ought to be utilized in new forms, its defects 
should be frankly recognized. It has been 
associated in our thought with exclusive, clois- 
tered seats of learning, like Cambridge and 
Oxford; it lends itself easily to indulgence in 
elaborate display of art for art's sake instead 
of for life's sake; and it is a permanent re- 
minder of mediaeval ecclesiasticism, which is 
out of harmony with modern ideals of democ- 
racy. 

It seems evident that the appropriate style 



8o A COMMUNITY CENTER 

of architecture to embody the democratic idea 
for which America stands remains still to be 
created. The best is yet to be. Ruskin says 
that: 

Great nations write their autobiographies in three 
manuscripts — the book of their deeds, the book of their 
words, and the book of their art. Not one of these 
books can be understood unless we read the two others, 
but of the three, the only trustworthy^ one is the last. 

What men embody in material form, invest 
large sums of money in, and lovingly seek to 
beautify, is a sure index of the value they place 
upon it. America has not yet vs^ritten her 
autobiography in architecture, but she has 
started to w^rite it, and has begun to express 
her appreciation of the indispensable import- 
ance of education to a democracy, as is seen in 
the handsome new school buildings now being 
erected in all parts of the country. A rare op- 
portunity to render a patriotic service is now 
afforded to those architects who are also ar- 
tists, if they have the courage to discard an- 
cient conventional standards and create a new 
type to represent the American democratic 
idea. 

In this process laymen in art have a marked 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 8i 

responsibility, because they finally determine 
the kind of building to be erected. In a 
democracy, art, like everything else, is pro- 
foundly affected by public opinion. More- 
over, laymen can prevent professional archi- 
tects from imposing any one conventional type 
of school building upon all communities. To 
do so would be deadly dullness. This will be 
prevented also by the need for adaptation in 
various sections of the country to conditions of 
climate, to materials available for use, and to 
the location of buildings. But while there 
should be variety of form, there are certain 
formative principles which must always dis- 
tinguish a community type of building. It 
must be a democratic building; that is, it must 
be beautiful, because hunger for beauty is uni- 
versal and beauty is of the highest educational 
value; it must be cheerful, for to dispense joy 
to all is a duty demanded of the democratic 
ideal; it must be in simple good taste, so that 
the average man will feel unoppressed and un- 
embarrassed by it; it must be economical to 
build, and a beautiful building is necessarily 
more economical; it must be low, springing 
out of the soil, easy of access, wide spreading, 



82 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

ample for hospitality, for no man can be a 
democrat by himself; it must be an honest 
building; that is, its beauty must be organic. 
It is not artificial adornment superimposed 
from the outside, but inheres in the structure 
itself. It is like the true beauty of com- 
plexion, which does not depend on an external 
application of paint, but on the rude internal 
facts of digestion and circulation of blood. 
No beauty exists in nature unconnected with 
her useful processes. Likewise a democratic 
building is natural and honest. It has little 
or no ornament; its charm is an inborn fitness 
and proportion. No canon of taste is more 
holy than fitness. 

The style of architecture which embodies 
these essential principles of a democratic 
building more nearly perhaps than any other 
is the new Santa Fe type, which is a combina- 
tion of the old mission and adobe style in such 
a way as to justify us in regarding it as a real 
American product. It is well illustrated in 
the Alhambra Consolidated School near Phoe- 
nix, Ariz. The artist-architect who has cour- 
age to escape from slavery to the precedents of 
yesterday and the stupid imitations of out- 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 83 

grown standards, and who will take for his 
motto "Not one thing that you do not know to 
be useful and believe to be beautiful," has to- 
day the opportunity to assist the people to 
create a new representative American archi- 
tecture, fitted to express their new discovery of 
the need for a community schoolhouse. To 
build a real house of the people is a patriotic 
service of the highest order. Fletcher B. 
Dresslar, in his able and comprehensive bul- 
letin on American Schoolhouses, very appro- 
priately reminds the builders of one of these 
temples of democracy that "Whoever under- 
takes to build a schoolhouse to meet and foster 
these ideals ought to approach his task with 
holy hands and a consciousness of the devotion 
which it is to typify." 

FREE TRADE IN FRIENDSHIP 
This, then, is the writer's understanding as 
to what a community center is and how to or- 
ganize it, briefly stated. To treat in brief a 
subject so big with meaning for the common 
welfare, one needs what the poet Keats calls 
"negative capabilities" ; he must know what to 
leave in the inkstand, unsaid. 



84 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

But after the most efficient methods of or- 
ganization have been discovered and applied, 
there is one word which must never be left 
unsaid or unheeded. Organization is to the 
thing to be done what a shell is to an egg. 
And while a shell is necessary for the conven- 
ient handling of eggs, the shell is not the Ggg. 
The egg of a community center, its heart and 
soul, is an idea, a spiritual purpose. To sac- 
rifice its soul to efficiency is like selling the egg 
for the shell. 

If Ruth's sickle, used in the Hebrew repub- 
lic, were placed by the side of the McCormick 
reaper in a world's fair, our progress in me- 
chanical efficiency would be dramatically ex- 
hibited. But how about Ruth herself? If 
she appeared among the women at the fair, 
would our superiority in that branch of man- 
ufacture be so apparent? Is it Ruth or only 
her sickle we have improved? i Almost every 
nation has at its beginning some formative 
principle which shapes its organization and 
determines its contribution to the world's wel- 
fare. In Palestine it was religion; in Greece 
it was culture; in Rome it was law; in Amer- 
ica it is what? Her birth and history clearly 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 85 

indicate that America's high mission is the en- 
franchisement of manhood, the development 
of the individual. This purpose is the soul 
of the community center movement. 

The community ideal is fittingly expressed 
in a high relief by Frank F. Stone, who illum- 
inates it by contrasting it with its opposite 
ideal. In this work of art three figures are 
represented. On the right is the figure of a 
well-fed, self-centered man. The expression 
on the face is a freezing scorn and utter dis- 
dain of his fellow men. The crown, miter, 
money bag, sword, and ermine robe which he 
holds in his hands, all indicate that he is an 
egotist, who through wealth, the assumption 
of divine rights, the accident of birth, or the 
sword of force seeks power, prestige, and ad- 
vantage over others. Opposite him is the type 
of a true democrat, who finds life not insipid, 
but inspiring. He is in the act of scaling 
the difficult heights of human achievement 
through his own unaided efforts. But he is 
unwilling to rise alone, and as he fixes his eyes 
on the heights which beckon him, he reaches 
down a helping hand to raise a weaker brother 
with himself. No work of art could more 



86 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

clearly represent the community center ideal, 
together with the ideal which it seeks to re- 
place. The only effective way to destroy an 
unworthy ideal is to replace it with a better 
one. 

The community center aims to realize its 
ideal by promoting free trade in friendship 
among all individuals and classes of the com- 
munity. This is its most efficient means for 
producing results, because men are more influ- 
enced through their feelings than their intel- 
lects. This is the reason why ^'poets are the 
unacknowledged legislators of the world." 
For the same reason friendship is the chief 
solvent of social and industrial difficulties. 
When David Grayson sat at dinner with a fac- 
tory owner, Mr. Vedder, and was helping him 
to settle a strike then in operation, Mr. Vedder 
asked him what kind of social philosopher he 
called himself. ^^I do not call myself by any 
name," said Grayson, ^'but if I chose a name, 
do you know the name I would like to have ap- 
plied to me?" ^'I can not imagine," was the 
answer. ^Well, I would like to be called 'an 
introducer.' My friend, Mr. Blacksmith, let 
me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Plutocrat, 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 87 

I could almost swear that you are brothers, so 
near alike you are. You will find each other 
wonderfully interesting, once you get over the 
awkwardness of the introduction." ^'It is a 
good name," said Mr. Vedder, laughing. 
"It's a wonderful name," said Grayson, "and 
it's about the biggest and finest work in the 
world — to know human beings just as they are 
and to make them acquainted with one another 
just as they are. Why, it's the foundation of 
all the democracy there is or ever will be. 
Sometimes I think that friendliness is the only 
achievement of life worth while, and un- 
friendliness the only tragedy." The commun- 
ity center is a factory for the manufacture of 
friendship, and the chief business of a com- 
munity secretary is to be "an introducer." 

Just as the mere statement of a problem is 
half of its solution, likewise free trade in 
friendship among men would break down half 
the barriers which separate them, because it 
would remove the chief cause of their strife. 
For a community to carry on its work without 
cultivating the spirit of friendship is like 
drawing a harrow over frozen ground. This 
is so essential to success that one of its chief 



88 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

aims should be to promote free trade in friend- 
ship by producing a collection of community 
center songs, so that the people could sing the 
sentiment as it is expressed in such poems as 
Richard Burton's — 

If I had the time to find a place 
And sit me down full face to face, 

With my better self that can not show 

In my daily life that rushes so : 
It might be then I would see my soul 
Was stumbling still toward the shining goal, 
I might be nerved by the thought sublime — 
If I had the time! 

If I had the time to let my heart 
Speak out and take in my life a part, 
To look about and to stretch a hand 
To a comrade quartered in no-luck land ; 
Ah, God! If I might but just sit still 
And hear the note of the whippoorwill, 
I think that my wish with God's would rhyme — 
If I had the time! 

If I had the time to learn from you 
How much for comfort my word could do; 
And I told you then of my sudden will 
To kiss your feet when I did you ill ; 
If the tears aback of the coldness feigned 
Could flow, and the wrong be quite explained — 
Brothers, the souls of us all would chime, 
If we had the time! 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 89 

The community center seeks to promote 
freindship, not only in local communities but 
also among communities, and not only among 
communities in a single state or nation, but 
among the larger communities of the nations 
themselves, by stimulating devotion to com- 
mon ideals, for there can be no friendship un- 
less there is similarity of aims and purposes. 
There is, perhaps, no more accurate or beau- 
tiful expression of that which separates and 
unites national communities than is to be 
found in the following letter sent to America 
by a pupil in Paris and made public by John 
H. Finley: 

It was only a little river, almost a brook ; it was called 
the Yser. One could talk from one side to the other 
without raising one's voice, and the birds could fly over 
it with one sweep of their wings. And on the two banks 
there were millions of men, the one turned toward the 
other, eye to eye. But the distance which separated them 
was greater than the stars in the sky ; it was the distance 
which separates right from injustice. 

The ocean is so vast that the sea gulls do not dare to 
cross it. During the seven days and seven nights the 
great steamships of America, going at full speed, drive 
through the deep waters before the lighthouses of France 
come into view; but from one side to the other hearts 
are touching. 



90 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

Manifestly the task of the community center 
is complex and difficult. Our business, how- 
ever, is not to debate the possibility of reach- 
ing the goal, but to make a start toward it. 
When Socrates was asked, ^'How shall we get 
to Mount Olympus?" he answered, "By doing 
all your walking in that direction." While 
we keep Mount Olmypus in sight to give us 
direction, we must recognize that the amount 
of possible progress toward it is determined by 
conditions as we find them.^^jOur choice does 
not lie between the ideal and the actual. We 
must always choose both. We must know not 
only the goal but the road to it. Our practi- 
cal problem is to devise a working plan which 
includes what is both ideally desirable and 
actually possible. If we are ever to arrive at 
Mount Olympus, we must start from where we 
are, we must take things "as is"; we must "ac- 
cept the universe" and try to fashion it as best 
we may with patience and good humor. 
]^^ Although the road to the community center 
goal is difficult, nevertheless the hope of ul- 
timate success has the best of guarantees. It 
is buttressed by unescapable necessity. The 
solid basis on which this hope rests is the lack 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 91 

of self-sufficiency. On this fact society itself 
is founded. On this principle, Plato con- 
structed his republic. No community nor na- 
tion, as well as no individual, is self-sufficient. 
This applies both to the supply of physical 
necessities and the supply of food for minds 
and souls. No nation, as no man, can long 
live a Robinson Crusoe type of existence. 
They have a community of interests. All men 
are political animals. They must have with 
each other some kind of business, either good 
or bad. The community center movement 
merely aims to make this business good instead 
of bad. The obvious sanity of this policy is 
the guarantee of its ultimate triumph. 

While a lack of knowledge concerning both 
the spirit and method of democracy makes the 
road to this goal a difficult one to travel, yet 
the rewards by the way are always in propor- 
tion to the hardships. The satisfaction of 
working for a cause bigger than one's private 
advantage is never lost, whatever be the for- 
tunes of the cause itself. Eric, a dying soldier 
boy in France writing his last letter to his 
father and mother, well expressed both the sat- 
isfaction and its cause when he said: '^To a 



92 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

very small number it is given to live in history ; 
their number is scarcely i to 10,000,000. To 
the rest it is only granted to live in their united 
achievements." This is the experience not 
only of vision-seeing, chivalrous youths who 
have not yet exchanged their ideals for their 
comforts, but it is the experience also of a ma- 
ture man like Thomas Jefiferson. When the 
long shadows fell across his life and he came 
to write his epitaph, this is what he wrote: 

HERE WAS BURIED 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

AUTHOR OF THE 

DECLARATION 

OF 

AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 

OF THE 

STATUTE OF VIRGINIA 

FOR 

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 

AND FATHER OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. 

It is highly significant that he never men- 
tions the fact that he had been governor of 
Virginia, Secretary of State, minister to 
France, twice President of the United States. 
That is to say, he never mentions any personal 
rewards, anything that the people had done 



HOW TO ORGANIZE 93 

for him, but only what he had done for the 
people, only the service which his genius and 
loyalty had rendered to the community causes 
of democracy and education. This alone is 
what he cared to remember with joy and pride. 
This is why the community-center movement 
is justified in claiming the major loyalty of all 
soldiers of the common welfare. 



PART III 

THE PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 




SHOES WHICH SUGGEST A SOCIAL PROGRAM 



THE PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 

THE "common house" 
"Come with me now to the common house, 
the Maison Commune, and tell me, first, if you 
know a more beautiful name than this! The 
common house! What ideas the familiar 
term awakens! There is, in the village, a 
house that belongs to no one in particular, that 
is open to the poor as to the rich; that is, so 
to speak, the domestic center, the home of the 
village itself." 

With this statement President Poincare of 
France closes his sketch of the checkered and 
stormy struggle, on the part of his country, to 
secure stable local self-government. There 
are in France to-day 36,225 communes, each 
with its common house, its mayor and its coun- 
cilors. Only recently have the liberties of 
local communities been put on a firm footing, 
although the Constituent Assembly in 1789 en- 
deavored to revive and establish them. The 
leaders of the French Revolution and the lead- 
ers of the American Revolution agreed in be- 

97 



98 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

lieving that the commune, the organized local 
community, is the corner-stone of the national 
edifice and the administrative unit most in con- 
formity with the nature of things. This ideal 
America has rediscovered, and is now attempt- 
ing to put it into operation through its com- 
munity-center movement. It is this ideal on 
account of which the United States Bureau of 
Education and the Council of National De- 
fense have united their forces for the purpose 
of promoting. 

HOW IT WORKS 
To build a Maison Commune, to make every 
schoolhouse the community capitol and every 
community a little democracy, is indeed, as 
President Poincare says, a beautiful ideal. 
But how does it work? That is the question 
with which this ideal is constantly challenged. 
Let us fearlessly accept the challenge, for 
ideals are intended to be operated. At the 
same time it ought to be frankly admitted — 
indeed it ought not to need stating — that 
neither in France nor in America does the 
ideal community as yet exist. The commun- 
ity, or the individual, laying claim to a ful- 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 99 

filled ideal, either must have a low ideal, or 
be self-deceived. The praise of a freeman's 
citizenship is sung as a kind of doxology in 
public assemblies. It is an emotional outlet 
for our worship of American ideals. But the 
practice of citizenship in an actual community 
is quite a different thing, and obviously a com- 
plex and difficult enterprise. The general 
principles expressed in the first part of our 
Declaration of Independence are beautiful 
ideals, but when we came to its bill of partic- 
ulars our trouble began. It led to the Revolu- 
tionary War. The ideals of the Declaration 
did not even get themselves embodied in the 
Constitution and have never since been prac- 
ticed in any American Community. This is 
nothing against the ideals. It is no reason 
why one's devotion to them should cool. 
Quite the contrary; it is the most cogent reason 
for the renewal of loyalty and the increase of 
zest in working for their realization. All 
worth-while ideals are difficult to operate. 
"The task of the American freeman," says 
Francis B. Gummere, "is to see his ideal com- 
munity steady and whole, and to put its yoke 
upon his own neck." 



loo A COMMUNITY CENTER 

While the kind of community whose organ- 
ization we seek to promote is an imagined 
community, and does not yet exist, yet there 
have always been encouraging approximations 
to it. Approximations to it exist to-day in 
larger numbers, both in America and in other 
nations, than at any previous period of his- 
tory. Indeed, so numerous are they that a 
brief description of them would occupy a vol- 
ume. A present urgent need of the Bureau 
of Education is to prepare such a descriptive 
report in order to answer the requests for in- 
formation which the newly awakened interest 
in community organization has inspired in all 
sections of the country. 

Within the limits here allotted it is possible 
to give only a few brief illustrations. But 
they are illustrations of typical communities; 
the writer has first-hand knowledge of them, 
and they are representative of permanently 
important lines of work now in the process of 
development. The communities here selected 
for illustration are: A village, a country- 
side, a suburb, a small city, an average city, 
a big city, a state. 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP loi 

A VILLAGE 

The village referred to has a population of 
500 and is surrounded by a rich farming coun- 
try. The way this farm-village began its com- 
munity work is significant. Some women in 
the village church gave a simple amateur play, 
a community drama, to satisfy the young peo- 
ple's desire for pleasure, to promote the spirit 
of cooperation and incidentally to raise money 
for the church. It was a marked success, but 
when the proceeds were presented to the 
church officials, they refused it on the ground 
that it was tainted money. This event bore 
immediate fruit. It at once revealed the 
necessity for a building to meet the obvious 
needs of the community, which the church 
refused to meet. A movement was started to 
secure one. It met with enthusiastic response. 
A beautiful community building was erected 
and dedicated, free of debt. I had the 
honor of giving the dedication address. In 
it are conducted lectures, community dramas, 
games, socials and dances. It houses a library 
and provides preaching on Sundays. The 
community spirit thus created has been so im- 



I02 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

pressive and helpful that one citizen asked for 
the privilege of endowing the building. The 
amount is not sufficient to cripple the move- 
ment, but enough to ease the burden of raising 
operating expenses. It has so unified and en- 
thused the community as to inspire the erec- 
tion of a large new schoolhouse, a far better 
equipped building than previously would have 
been possible. These are visible signs of the 
new spirit of neighborhood and responsible 
citizenship born in the community. 

The significant fact exhibited in this com- 
munity's experience is the need to broaden the 
scope and deepen the content of religion. But 
since religion is still regarded by many as a 
dogma instead of an attitude to life, it is bet- 
ter not to use this term and say rather that the 
community achieved its freedom from the 
false distinction between sacred and secular. 
The contribution which this farm village 
makes to other communities needs to be em- 
phasized. It can be done most briefly and 
effectively by relating it to an incident in 
Mark Twain's wise book, ^'A Connecticut 
Yankee at the Court of King Arthur." He 
describes a certain zealot and anchorite, who 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 103 

condemned himself to the treadmill practice 
of bending and unbending his body — bowing 
and rising — all day long, day after day and 
year after year. That was his religion, — his 
whole religion as he conceived it — and by its 
practice he had won for himself a reputation 
for transcendent piety. But to the hard- 
headed, practical Yankee this looked like a 
waste of energy and he began to study how to 
utilize it and turn it to some good purpose. 
Accordingly he arranged a device by which 
the old ascetic was hitched to a sewing-ma- 
chine, and as he continued to practice his re- 
ligion he was made to turn the machine and 
thus his piety was turned to some account. 
Mark Twain is justified in turning the weapon 
of his humor against the distinction between 
sacred and secular, because while it has no 
existence in fact, and is merely a mental illu- 
sion, it has done untold damage to human wel- 
fare. The progress of the community center 
movement requires that everywhere this dis- 
tinction be destroyed, just as this farm village 
succeeded in doing. 



I04 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

A COUNTRY-SIDE 

The open-country community selected for 
illustration is a county. The special feature 
of its work here described is a new enterprise 
and suggestive to other counties. The local 
communities of this county were requested to 
send as many of their members as could come 
to a country schoolhouse and spend one week 
together in community center activities. 
They came — men, women and children, 
youths and adults, — they came on foot, by 
mule-back and in automobiles, — they came 
every day from near and far, some as far as 
twenty miles. They increased in numbers as 
the week went on. This experiment may most 
accurately be described by calling it a people's 
university. There was present a faculty of 
over a dozen members, made up of representa- 
tives from the state departments of education, 
agriculture, health, road-making, fire protec- 
tion and from the state university and state 
normal college, and the U. S. Bureau of Edu- 
cation. Each morning the faculty met on the 
porch of a near-by hotel to adjust the day's 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 105 

program and indulge in jollity and recreation 
(it is a prohibition state). 

The day's work lasted from 3 to 10 P. M. 
The afternoon was devoted to instruction in 
road-making, home economics, cooperative 
buying and selling, fire protection, organized 
play, music, boys' and girls' club work. 
There were classes for all, both young and old, 
the teachers each day exchanging classes. At 
the twilight hour all remained for a picnic 
supper in the grove surrounding the school- 
house. It was a real ^'communion supper," in 
which we broke bread together as friends and 
neighbors devoted to the common welfare. 

No such People's University is complete 
without a motion picture outfit as a time-sav- 
ing instrument of instruction. But there was 
no electricity in the county. How could it 
be managed? Where there's a will there's a 
way. The leaders of the experiment secured 
two Ford automobiles. On one they placed a 
Delco-Light machine which made the electric- 
ity. On the other they put a projector. 
Twenty educational reels were sent from the 
Federal Departments at Washington, and 



io6 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

story reels were secured from private agencies. 
The schoolhouse was, of course, too small to 
hold the people. The screen was hung on the 
side of the building and the people seated in 
the grove. The evening program consisted of 
community singing, motion pictures and a lec- 
ture by the writer on community organization. 
To him the prospect of competing with motion 
pictures was a source of anxiety, especially 
since more than half of the people had never 
seen a motion picture. But his fear was un- 
justified. They enjoyed the pictures but did 
not lose their heads over them. It is no small 
compliment to them to report their repeated 
remarks that they did not come for pictures 
but for a serious discussion of their community 
problems. Moreover, the writer presented to 
them exactly the same lectures which he had 
delivered to a summer school in a rich and 
learned northern university, and they received 
the same appreciation, only more so, which 
means that one never needs to talk down to the 
people provided he uses language they can un- 
derstand. They may not be bookish but they 
know how to think about life's fundamentals. 
This was an experiment in taking a univer- 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 107 

sity to the people who need it most. It is a 
new kind of university extension. It is ap- 
plied democracy. Its value cannot be over- 
estimated. For, as President Wilson said, "A 
kind of liberal education must underlie every 
wholesome political and social process, the 
kind of liberal education which connects a 
man's feeling and his comprehension with the 
general run of mankind, which disconnects 
him from the special interests and marries his 
thought to the common interests of great com- 
munities." 

The significant fact about this county's ex- 
periment is that the people's response amply 
justifies the labor involved in it. One result, 
for example, was that the county commission- 
ers appropriated $12,000 to secure better 
sanitary conditions in the county. This is 
an index of far larger results. The sight of 
the people seated in the schoolhouse grove on 
those warm moon-light nights — their wistful 
eager faces, their hunger for knowledge, their 
new sense of community responsibility, their 
social and mental hospitality — leaves a picture 
in the writer's memory never to be forgotten 
and furnishes a ground of hope that their en- 



io8 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

larged outlook upon life will issue in recon- 
structed communities. As the week drew to 
a close the members of the faculty were moved 
in common by a new and strangely vital im- 
pulse which they confessed to each other. It 
was a sort of religious passion. They said this 
is the new evangelism, an educational evangel- 
ism. This same work must be done in every 
community of the State. And so it ought. 

A SUBURB 

The suburb selected for illustration is at- 
tached to one of our eastern cities already fa- 
mous for the beauty of its suburbs. This one 
is among the best. It has no school, no 
church, and no town government, on account 
of which happy condition of freedom the 
writer has told the people they are to be con- 
gratulated, because there are so many things 
they will not have to unlearn and so much 
dead lumber they will not have to remove. 
The door is wide open for a fine piece of 
constructive work. The work of construc- 
tion is so much easier than that of reconstruc- 
tion or destruction. 

The writer has urged this community to 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 109 

organize its community life comprehensively, 
and to build its proposed "common house" in 
such a way that it will serve as a school, as a 
social club and as a town hall all at once. He 
is also urging it to take a big step in advance 
and to make its '^city manager" and school 
principal to be one and the same person in 
order to become an object lesson to towns and 
cities and demonstrate how it is possible to 
unify and simplify public affairs, to give the 
school the dominant place it deserves and to 
redeem politics from its low condition. More 
than 75 per cent of the money raised by this 
community from taxation would be used for 
school purposes. Its other public interests 
are quite subordinate. Indeed it is getting on 
very well now without any town government 
at all except the slight amount exercised by 
the township. In organizing its public ac- 
tivities this community has the rare chance of 
doing the obviously wise but daring thing of 
putting first things first and second things 
second. 

It has already made a fair start. It has in- 
corporated its community association in order 
not only to hold property, but especially in 



no A COMMUNITY CENTER 

order to safeguard the community's develop- 
ment until such time as a state law can be 
enacted for the incorporation of towns on lines 
better suited to promote economic and social 
welfare. It has secured an old stone mill 
building long unused and fitted it up to serve 
as an assembly room and social center. 
Through the use of this old building a rarely 
beautiful neighborhood spirit has already been 
created. 

For several years, in this old building, com- 
munity drama has been developed to a high 
degree of perfection. Community drama has 
been called the ^^ritual of the religion of 
democracy." It has been so used by this 
suburb. Members of the Community have 
both written and staged plays of the highest 
merit. The writer here witnessed a play 
called "The Artsman," a local product, which 
would have done credit to any theater in the 
country. The secret of its charm, as of all 
good work, was its sincerity. This was re- 
vealed by a touching little circumstance. The 
author of the drama, who was to have taken 
the leading part, died before the play was 
given. He had planned to build a real fire- 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP iii 

place on the stage to add a touch of reality 
to the drama. In respect to his wish the 
young people, some of whom had parts in the 
play, built with their own hands out of real 
stone a fireplace which burned real wood. 
Any community where such sincere devotion 
is possible exhibits unusual capacity for realiz- 
ing community ideals. When the story of the 
spiritual value of community drama comes to 
be written, what this little suburb has done 
will occupy a worthy place in it. 

The typical suburb is in special need of a 
community center, because it lacks a per- 
sonality, a community sense. It is neither city 
nor country. It is chiefly an eating and sleep- 
ing place. It is semi-detached from normal 
activities, and has a tendency to breed a semi- 
detached type of man. On the other hand, 
the suburb, just because its members have 
broken away from their old moorings and tra- 
ditions and represent previous environments so 
various in their nature, is a place especially 
fitted for a comprehensive organization like a 
community center. From long and intimate 
acquaintance with suburbs, the writer feels 
that the suburb is the most fruitful of all fields 



112 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

for the rapid growth of the community center 
ideal and can make a distinct contribution to 
it if it is awake to its opportunity and if money 
has not destroyed its capacity for public- 
mindedness. 

The suburb here referred to is a striking ex- 
ample of the opportunity which suburbs in 
general have. Unhandicapped in the process 
of organizing its life, it has the chance to do 
pioneer work of the highest value. It can 
show town and city governments how they may 
eliminate needless waste and duplication by 
using the schoolhouses as convenient and effec- 
tive avenues through which to perform admin- 
istrative functions and public services, such as 
voting, recreation, health, fire-protection, vital 
statistics and many more. 

If it were not so new it would seem an 
obviously wise thing to say that every police- 
man ought to be an assistant community 
secretary, that he ought to receive a course 
of instruction in social service, and that 
he ought to be a type of man capable of taking 
such a course. He ought at least to be a 
scoutmaster, and all the boys in his district 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 113 

should be his assistants. A school would do 
wisely to include in its curriculum such a field 
course in civics for its boys. This may of 
course necessitate a new type of policeman but 
this is the intention. If policemen became 
social workers it would halve their troubles 
and double their joys; that is, it would 
make them four times as efficient as at present. 
A beginning in this direction has already 
been made at Toledo, Ohio, where they have 
discarded their clubs and adopted the slogan 
that their business is to help and not hurt 
people. A policeman should be rewarded 
not for the number of arrests he succeeds in 
making, but for the number he succeeds in 
making unnecessary. His aim should be pre- 
vention instead of cure. 

The suggestion to affiliate the town govern- 
ment and the school, which this suburb is con- 
sidering, does not mean that politics should be 
taken into the schools but that the schools 
should be taken into politics. It means that it 
is the effective method, if there is any, by 
which to redeem the term politics, and make it 
synonymous, not with partisan and personal 



114 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

profit, but with social service, as it once was 
and as it will be again when the community 
center movement becomes dominant. 

A SMALL CITY 

The small city, whose community center is 
selected for illustration, is one of the most 
beautiful cities in America. Its community 
center referred to is characteristic of the city. 
The building is the best equipped building for 
community center work which the writer has 
as yet anywhere seen. This community is also 
in the forefront of community development in 
that it has a secretary, publicly elected by the 
people of the neighborhood and supported out 
of public funds. This fact needs to be care- 
fully noted because it is certain to become 
more and more apparent that complex work of 
this sort cannot be carried on with success 
unless trained workers are employed. In- 
deed the need of leadership has already be- 
come urgent. It is already clear that the field 
for community work will be ready much 
sooner than workers can be prepared to man it. 
Even this community with its fine equipment 
is typical of this condition. It has the most 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 115 

complete and business-like organization that 
the writer has seen. Its machinery is first 
class. It only needs to be operated. But 
there is a call for more work to be done than 
any one person can do. 

In these circumstances it has centered its 
effort along one or two lines of activity chiefly. 
Its main work at present is to equip its mem- 
bers with useful occupations. It conducts 
evening classes in sewing, millinery, civil serv- 
ice preparation, public speaking, parliamen- 
tary law, and other subjects. It pays special 
attention to health and recreation. It con- 
ducts classes in gymnasium work for girls 
and women, social and rhythmic dancing, am- 
ateur theatricals, junior and senior orches- 
tra, grade violin classes. The number at- 
tending these classes is about 800 per week. 
During special weeks there have been as many 
as 2,000 in attendance, but the average is about 
800 in the winter season. The amount re- 
ceived to defray operating expenses last year 
was over $2,000. This year it will be more. 

In addition to these there are many other 
activities like war kitchen work, lectures on 
food conservation and special entertainments. 



ii6 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

A start has been made in community buying, 
and plans are all made to operate a community 
bank. But the fact of importance about this 
community is the marked success it has made 
in its work of vocational training. It does not 
neglect cultural activities, because it believes 
that men and women are something more than 
working machines. But it believes that the 
first essential equipment for a citizen in a 
democracy is the capacity for self-support. It 
is not the only equipment but it is the first. 
It was the law and custom of the Hebrew 
Republic that every man and woman should 
have a trade. It is a good rule for every 
Republic, for no citizen of a democracy ought 
to be a beggar. Moreover, those, who do not 
need to earn a living, most of all need the edu- 
cation which manual training gives. This is 
a cardinal doctrine of the community center 
movement. Every community center ought 
to have a workshop open in the evenings, 
where mechanics may go to school to each 
other and where they may get expert help and 
advice that they may secure greater pro- 
ficiency. That is the message of this particu- 
lar center to other communities. 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 117 

AN AVERAGE CITY 

The type of work in an average city, here 
given for illustration, is selected because it 
embodies a distinctive idea of great value. It 
is a poor, populous typical manufacturing cen- 
ter. The school is over-crowded with chil- 
dren and the district is over-crowded with 
saloons. The school has an especially poor 
equipment, but it has a principal, equipped 
with genius and a social vision. 

She devised a system by which she knows 
each day why absent students are absent. A 
common cause for absence was discovered to 
be the lack of shoes suitable to wear on stormy 
days. She removed this cause by having the 
shoes mended by boys in the manual training 
department and lending the children shoes 
while their own were being mended. The 
boys did this work so well that they were 
asked to mend shoes for people outside the 
school. For this they received pay, which 
they needed in order to be able to remain in 
school, instead of leaving school in order to 
help support the family by outside work. 
Thus was born a cobbling shop. Then the 



ii8 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

principal realized that it would be unwise for 
some of the boys to take home the money they 
earned, because it would be spent by unworthy 
parents in the saloon. She therefore started 
a savings bank to safeguard these earnings. 
Thus there originated two economic enter- 
prises — a bank and a cobbling shop. 

On one of my visits I bought a pair of these 
little dilapidated shoes, for the sake of the 
parable they embodied. Their owner was a 
little girl. The health of this potential 
mother of future American citizens was in 
danger. Her education was interrupted; she 
was debarred from the school equipment, the 
expense of which went on whether she was 
present or absent. The principal attempted 
to meet these obvious human needs, and yet she 
was called before the school board and re- 
quired to explain and defend her unusual 
audacity. The interesting fact to note is that 
it is the principal who took the initiative in 
this community work. She is the type de- 
scribed in Herbert Quick's "The Brown 
Mouse." She is a woman of tact and force, 
and was able to continue her work in spite of 
opposition. 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 119 

The situation in this district bristles with 
interesting problems. Close to the school 
there is a social settlement with four resident 
workers and a large yearly budget. It has not 
been a great success. The school is doing the 
same work better and at less expense. The 
school and settlement needed each other. 
How to coordinate them is the question which 
the writer was asked to assist in solving. It is 
a question which everywhere will demand in- 
creasing attention. The wise step taken by 
this school in arranging that clinics, conducted 
by city and private agencies for mothers and 
babies, use the schoolhouse instead of pri- 
vately rented quarters is a similar question of 
great social interest. Interesting as these 
questions are they are here passed over in 
order to center attention on the shoe-shop. 
The issue raised by it is the extent to which a 
school ought to be used to meet economic needs 
which involve the moral and spiritual welfare 
of the community, the extent to which articles 
made in the schools can be sold to the com- 
munity, the extent to which school activities 
can be related to life processes. It is an issue 
of immediate and growing importance. 



I20 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

A picture of the shoes referred to is repro- 
duced at the head of this chapter, because they 
suggest a complete social program. This 
fact is here emphasized because so many com- 
munities are at a loss to know what activities 
to undertake and are constantly asking some 
one to furnish them a program. The truth is 
that the home-soil of any community will 
probably furnish all the program it needs to 
ask, just as in the district under discussion. 
Take so simple and obvious a starting point as 
this little pair of shoes. If the adults of a 
community center, who are organized on the 
basis of their responsibility for children, were 
to follow the lead presented by these shoes and 
inquired into the causes which compel the 
owners of such shoes to drop out of school, it 
would lead them into the home and its con- 
ditions; it would lead them into the factory to 
discover the amount of wage received; it 
would lead them into the saloon to discover 
what proportion of the wage was wasted there ; 
it would lead them into the school to discover 
whether the studies were such as to hold the 
interest of children and to equip them for their 
work in life. Here's a program ready-made 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 121 

and amply sufficient to enlist the best thought 
of any community for an unlimited period. 

In this neighborhood over 91 per cent of 
the girls and boys are eliminated from school 
before they finish the grammar grades. This 
percentage is abnormally high, but the average 
is over 50 per cent for the entire country. The 
fact that the majority of our children do not 
receive as much as a grammar school education 
is an un-American and a suicidal national 
policy and forebodes serious evil to the Re- 
public's future. If any community believed 
that the child is the nation's biggest asset and 
should set itself the task of providing such 
v^ays and means or removing such obstacles as 
may be necessary to enable all children to 
remain in school until they have finished the 
grammar grades; if it adopted the slogan — at 
least a grammar school education the mini- 
mum for every American girl and boy; if it 
courageously attempted to remove the causes 
which now rob the children of this minimum, 
whether these causes be the kind of studies 
now pursued in school, the home conditions of 
the children, or the economic conditions of 
the community, it would render a national ser- 



122 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

vice second to none in permanent value. It is 
a project big enough and vital enough to enlist 
the loyal support of every lover of American 
ideals. 

A BIG CITY 

When we come to a big city our real trouble 
begins. It is so vast, so complex, that one is at 
a loss to know where to begin or end. A big 
city is a whole nation in itself, and it is essen- 
tial that we think of it in these terms. It is 
because of this complexity that the writer has 
selected for illustration a phase of community 
activity which is essential to effective work in 
a big city. 

The district of the city here referred to con- 
tains a population of 40,000. In it there are 
more hospitals and more sickness; more 
charity organizations and more poverty than 
exists, perhaps, in any other community of like 
size in the world. It seems incredible but it is 
true that there are as many as 147 agencies and 
organizations, municipal, private and char- 
itable, all operating on the defenseless private 
citizen. Talk of the '^simple life"! Where 
can such a thing be found in such a com- 
munity? One mother in this district, whose 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 123 

sense of humor gave her some relief, told a 
friend of the writer that she felt she would be 
driven to the expediency of keeping office 
hours in her home in order to receive all the 
organizations desiring to operate on her. 

The immense amount of needless waste in 
overhead charges through duplication and 
conflict of activities, which must necessarily re- 
sult, from such conditions, is too obvious to 
need explanation. It is a condition of things 
in which the law of diminishing returns is 
operating at full speed. Is it any wonder that 
James Bryce said the government of our cities 
is America's most conspicuous failure? With 
a view of eliminating some of the causes of this 
failure a group of pioneer social workers have 
put into operation in this neighborhood an in- 
strument which the writer believes will be 
widely adopted in other districts of the city. 
It is ''a community clearing house." It is as 
yet a laboratory experiment in community 
work, but it has already demonstrated its 
obvious usefulness. 

This particular community clearing house 
is an intelligence office for information. It is 
a point of contact between the people and the 



124 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

municipal government. It bridges the gulf 
between them. It furnishes information to 
municipal departments concerning the needs 
of the people. It furnishes information to the 
people concerning the services which their 
government is prepared to render. It also ren- 
ders the same sort of service to the numer- 
ous social service agencies and institutions, 
both public and private, operating in this dis- 
trict. They call it "a neighborhood gateway 
to all the city's resources of helpfulness." 

What this service means to the lonely, needy, 
bewildered citizens of a big city can only be 
appreciated by one familiar with its life. To 
bring together human needs and the municipal 
agencies designed to meet them, this is a task, 
the importance of which can be learned only 
by experience. To one ignorant of them, 
helpful institutions might as well be non-ex- 
istent unless the knowledge of them is made 
available for use. The clearing house not 
only makes such knowledge available, but one 
of its chief merits is that it does it speedily. 
The common cause of an incalculable burden 
on the city is the fact that moral and physical 
ills are neglected so long that the remedy, 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 125 

when it is applied, is of little avail. Most of 
the social energy of a large city is consumed 
in attempting to undo what might have been 
prevented. 

The clearing house has a large significance 
for a city community. There should be a 
central clearing house in every large city dis- 
trict and a sub-station of it in each one of its 
local community centers. The general data 
gathered by the central clearing house can be 
made available for each local schoolhouse, but 
only through the local center can the human 
needs be made adequately known. The influ- 
ence of the clearing house upon the average 
citizen's attitude to his city government and 
also upon the character of the government 
itself will undoubtedly produce a marked and 
helpful change. One of the pioneers of the 
project wisely says : '^It is important that the 
people have an intelligent sympathy toward 
their own government. . . . Ignorance, re- 
sistance, and hostility must be transformed 
into sympathy and understanding. The indi- 
vidual and his immediate group must be led 
to initiate their own improvement." Does not 
this state a basic need of the big city? And 



126 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

is not this the need which the community cen- 
ter is designed and equipped to meet? 

A STATE 

The state selected for illustration has in suc- 
cessful operation an overhead organization, 
which in an expanded form the writer believes 
every other state should duplicate. It is a 
state Bureau of Community Service. It is a 
central bureau composed of a representative of 
the state department of education, agriculture, 
health, the college of agriculture, and me- 
chanical arts, the normal and industrial col- 
lege and the farmer's union. It is designed to 
coordinate state agencies so that they will be 
real allies, and not rivals in the public service. 
Its chairman is the state commissioner of edu- 
cation. It employs an executive secretary. 
The state appropriates $25,000 annually for 
its use. 

It seems desirable, in order to secure the best 
results, that the plan on which this state has 
organized its bureau should be enlarged. Its 
membership ought to include representatives 
not only of state departments, but also of vol- 
unteer agencies, and individuals who have 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 127 

rendered conspicuous service to community de- 
velopment or who have special equipment for 
it. The application of the term ^'State" needs 
also to be expanded to include cities of the first 
class. They ought to organize their own ser- 
vice bureaus. They ought to be regarded as 
city-states and treated as separate units. They 
are more populous than some states, indeed one 
borough of New York City is several times 
more populous than some states. Moreover, 
a big city's problems are peculiar to itself. In 
the work of the Council of National Defense 
it was found necessary to deal with New York 
City as a separate entity. With the consent of 
the State Council, it was so arranged. For 
several years in educational matters the same 
plan has been in practical operation, though 
never definitely agreed upon. 

The need for such a bureau in states and 
cities at once becomes obvious the moment one 
attempts to do any constructive work. The 
same old needless waste through duplication 
and conflicts everywhere clutters up the high- 
way and obstructs progress. It is one of the 
ugliest of our social diseases. But our present 
public need calls for concerted action and to 



128 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

this call there is a most encouraging response. 
Recently one of our large cities invited the 
writer to assist in coordinating its organ- 
izations with the mayor's committee of defense 
for the sake of their common purpose. There 
were found to be seven large city-wide ac- 
tivities, as well as many smaller ones, all aim- 
ing at the same thing, but each going its own 
way. The facts themselves demand a central 
bureau as the only instrument to secure effec- 
tive action and to prevent enormous waste. 
As soon as representatives of these organ- 
izations assembled in the same room and faced 
the facts, they were public-minded enough to 
pronounce a unanimous verdict in favor of a 
service bureau through which they could do 
team work. What they will do when they are 
out of each other's presence cannot be pre- 
dicted. But there seems to be good ground 
for hope that the city will establish a bureau 
of community service. 

Such a bureau would enable councils of 
defense to do their work more effectively by 
utilizing those agencies having large expe- 
rience in community work. It would also be 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 129 

prepared to conserve and carry on any good 
work done by the councils of defense, when 
they go out of business at the close of the war. 
The virile and concerted moral forces evoked 
by the struggle against the enemies of democ- 
racy outside the nation ought not to be de- 
mobilized at the close of the war, but ought to 
be retained as a permanent civilian army to do 
battle against the foes of democracy within the 
Nation. 

To be most effective such a service bureau 
ought to be given a public status. This can 
be done if it is created either by the Council of 
Defense or by the Board of Education. But 
since the Council of Defense is a temporary 
and the Board of Education a permanent body, 
it seems obviously wiser to relate it to the 
Board of Education. Such a Bureau ought 
to be organized with care. How to make it a 
responsible body, and at the same time grant it 
a large measure of freedom, requires careful 
thought. These two elements can doubtless 
be adjusted by including in the act, which 
creates the bureau, a clear, definite statement 
as to its aims and purposes, and an equally 



ISO A COMMUNITY CENTER 

clear statement granting freedom as to means 
and methods to be used in securing the results 
expected of it. 

As a suggested basis of discussion the writer 
would propose that a bureau of community 
service be composed of an indefinite number of 
members, both men and women, who have spe- 
cial equipment for community work; that 
among its members there shall be at least one 
representative of those organizations, both 
governmental and voluntary, which are non- 
partisan, nonsectarian and whose aim is the 
public welfare; that its members be appointed 
either by the Superintendent of Public In- 
struction or the Board of Education, until 
three have been appointed, after which they 
shall be elected by the Bureau itself; that the 
Bureau organize itself, electing its own offi- 
cers and making its own rules of procedure; 
and that the chairman of the Bureau be ap- 
pointed a collaborator of the United States 
Bureau of Education in its work of com- 
munity organization. 

Whatever form of organization may be 
deemed best, the need for such a Bureau seems 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 131 

obvious. It would prevent the serious dam- 
age resulting from the needless waste through 
the duplication of public social agencies 
already formed, and prevent new needless 
ones from forming. It would furnish a point 
of contact between complementary agencies 
within the state itself, and enable them to pool 
their experience, and it would furnish a point 
of contact between the State and Federal Gov- 
ernments, thus providing in each state a group 
of men and women, to whom the United States 
Bureau of Education could send information 
and from whom it could receive information 
to be used for the common advantage of all. 
The country is so big, that it is physically 
impossible for the Federal Government to act 
through individuals. It must act through 
representative men and women. The writer 
expresses the earnest hope that each state and 
city-state will, in the near future, seriously 
consider the question of creating such a bureau 
of representatives for organized community 
service, the value of which one state has al- 
ready demonstrated. 



132 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

A HALF-FINISHED PRODUCT 

There are two additional community ac- 
tivities, of immediate and permanent im- 
portance, in which the writer is engaged. 
They are community buying and banking and 
the incorporation of communities, so that com- 
munity buildings, erected to supplement the 
facilities of the schoolhouse, may be owned and 
operated by the community itself. But these 
subjects require special and extended treat- 
ment and are therefore omitted from this 
sketch. 

The seven types of communities, here 
briefly described, have been selected not only 
because the writer has first-hand knowledge 
of them, but also because they are typical of 
distinct and helpful phases of community 
work. Each one has achieved a marked suc- 
cess in one or more activities, which are both 
significant and suggestive to other communi- 
ties. While it is thus seen that the community 
center movement has developed far enough to 
permit us to say that it is in part an accom- 
plished fact, and that hundreds of com- 
munities have made a fair start, yet it needs 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 133 

to be clearly understood and frankly acknowl- 
edged that it is still in its pioneer period. It 
is in the making. It is a half-finished prod- 
uct. The work is complex and difficult. It 
would be quite easy if it were not for human 
nature. The problem is difficult because it is 
a human problem. But the rectification of 
human nature is the task which the community 
center movement has deliberately chosen in 
spite of its known difficulties. It is a pioneer 
in the new science of human economy. 

It is not only the complexity of human 
nature, which makes its task difficult, but the 
bigness of its aim. Its aim is nothing less than 
that suggested by the motto of the French 
Republic: ''Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." 
Its aim is not only high but broad, for it real- 
izes the frequently forgotten truth that a citi- 
zen's aspirations can never go any higher on 
the perpendicular than they go out on the 
horizontal; that sympathy determines the 
worth of aspiration; that if he cannot love his 
fellow-men whom he can see, he cannot love 
God, whom he cannot see. A good symbol 
for a community center would be a circle, be- 
cause it is not a membership organization, but 



134 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

a comprehensive one; it is an all-inclusive 
circle, which embraces the whole community. 
Is it not obvious why community center work 
is difficult? Its glory consists in the fact that 
its reach exceeds its grasp, as it ought to. 

In view of the bigness of the task, and its 
natural difficulty in ordinary times, it is a 
source of satisfaction to note the pronounced 
impetus at present given to the movement by 
the country's awakened sense of its need, and 
by the joint efifort of the Council of National 
Defense and the United States Bureau of Edu- 
cation to meet it. The Nation's biggest need 
is to mobilize its citizens in local communities 
for national service. This is a necessity at all 
times, but an urgent necessity in times of 
national danger. The first task of the local 
community is to register all its youths and 
adults, to ascertain its human resources, to en- 
list them in community companies for public 
service and especially to create and maintain 
a wholesome morale, for the nation's safety, 
either in war or peace, depends on the morale 
of its civilian population more than on any 
other single factor. "Morale," said Napo- 
leon, "is to force as three is to one." 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 135 

If, while local communities are organizing 
themselves for immediate war work they will 
so far as possible organize themselves along 
permanent lines for constructive purposes as 
well, they will not only do the immediate task 
better, but it will save them the labor of doing 
the same work twice. Moreover, by such a 
wise policy they will be prepared to meet the 
after-war problems immediately ahead, which 
in many respects will be far more difficult to 
handle than are the present problems of the 
war period. The question is not whether it is 
easy or difficult, but is it a citizen's duty. It 
is indeed a difficult and inspiring task at any 
time. But the Nation's present and per- 
manent need alike demand that it shall be 
done, if our experiment in democracy is not to 
suffer shipwreck; if America is not to become 
"a land of broken promise." Therefore, 
what? Therefore, it shall be done. 

"never so baffled, but — " 

The man who understands the meaning of 
community organization for the Nation's fu- 
ture welfare; who takes his stand not on his 
rights, but his duties; who appreciates the 



136 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

beauty of the American ideal, will not be baf- 
fled but inspired by the task. It is useless, 
and may be worse, for any man to undertake 
community work unless he is equipped with 
this point of view. He must take the victory 
with him before the battle begins. This is not 
poetry, it is the plainest of common facts. It 
is the first essential qualification for a man who 
enlists in the cause of democracy. He does 
not think failure, he thinks success. He is an 
optimist by conviction, not because he refuses 
to face ugly facts, but because he refuses to be 
defeated by them. His motto is ^'Don't count 
the enemy, beat him." 

The real democrat does not need success; he 
only needs a cause. That is, he is a man of 
courage. He has the courage to go on with- 
out guarantees of any kind. The American 
ideal has frequently broken down and in a 
number of respects? Very well. Granted. 
The real democrat does not permit what 
America has not yet achieved to blind him 
to the beauty of what she has already achieved. 
He knows that the American ideal is the hope 
of the world. The call to help that ideal 
progressively to realize itself, he regards as a 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 137 

challenge to his heroism. He accepts it. He 
has the courage to ^'carry on." 

In Browning's poem, "Ixion," occurs a 
phrase repeated three times, which aptly de- 
scribes the true American spirit. It is: 
"Never so baffled, but — " This is character- 
istic of Browning. He always ends in the 
crescendo, the rising scale, the optimistic note. 
He never ends in the dumps. If he had writ- 
ten the story of a certain Syrian nobleman, he 
would not have said, as his ancient biographer 
did, "Naaman was a mighty man of valor, but 
he was a leper." He would have reversed the 
sentence: "Naaman was a leper, but he was 
a mighty man of valor." Stevenson was an 
invalid, but he was a courageously happy man. 
Helen Keller is a deaf mute, but she is a bril- 
liant and beautiful spirit. There exist social 
and economic conditions in America, which 
contradict her democratic ideals, but she has 
done more towards the enfranchisement of the 
individual than has ever been done by any 
Nation in any previous period of history. 
She is still a young nation, but she is the oldest 
Republic of the World. "Never so baffled, 
but — " aptly expresses the kind of morale 



138 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

which, above everything else , needs to be 
created in her civilian Army, and w^hich the 
community center movement aims to create by 
mobilizing her citizens in every city and vil- 
lage and countryside community. If the 
American democracy is not as democratic as it 
ought to be, arise, let us do what we can to 
make it so. 

LINCOLN'S MISTAKE 

The most effective instrument through 
which to stimulate the practice of citizenship, 
to mobilize the intelligence, sympathy and 
material resources of the people in behalf of 
the cause of democracy, now threatened with 
defeat, is the organization of small com- 
munities into little democracies with school- 
houses for their capitols. But this is a big 
program. What can an individual do to con- 
tribute to its success? The first and most 
needful thing for him to do is to talk about it. 
All great movements began in talk. The be- 
ginning of a deed is an idea. The best con- 
ductor of an idea is a living word. 

It is a common and careless habit to em- 
phasize the importance of a deed by dispar- 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 139 

aging the importance of talk, forgetting that 
deeds and words constitute one piece of goods, 
like the two sides of a shield, only their rela- 
tion is not mechanical as in a shield, but vital. 
The men, who have most profoundly affected 
the course of history, men like Confucius, 
Jesus and Lincoln, were all teachers, were 
great talkers. Their weapon was an idea. 
The instrument they used to convey it was a 
living and dynamic word. There is now in 
the White House a teacher of democracy, 
whose great speeches are more effective than 
many battles. 

In Lincoln's memorable speech at Gettys- 
burg, he made one profound mistake. He 
said that no words he uttered there would long 
be remembered, whereas the fact is that the 
words he uttered there seem destined to out- 
live the memory of the battle. His great 
words are being cast in bronze and hung in 
innumerable schools throughout the country. 
Indeed it is not improbable that the time may 
come, when it will be necessary to subjoin a 
footnote to his speech in order to inform the 
people concerning the name of the battlefield, 
on which it was uttered. The movement to 



HO A COMMUNITY CENTER 

organize local communities aims to realize the 
ideal, which formed the subject of Lincoln's 
speech, and the present great need of the 
movement is for men and women, who under- 
stand what it means and who can express its 
meaning in living words, not only to public 
assemblies, but also in private to their neigh- 
bors. The subject of the kind of talk neces- 
sary to create public opinion effective enough 
to organize local communities into little 
democracies, is none other than the ideal for 
which our flag stands. When that ideal is 
once understood, and when it is exhibited by a 
community center in operation, the average 
man, both native and foreign born, will gladly 
accept it, because it is that for which he has 
been searching. 

THE MEANING OF THE FLAG 
Over no institution does the American flag 
more appropriately float than over the free 
public schoolhouse. It is not put there for 
decorative purposes. The inner meaning of 
its presence on the schoolhouse begins to ap- 
pear when we remember that in every city and 
village and countryside girls and boys, — 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 141 

twenty-two millions of them, — every morning 
stretch forth their hands towards the flag and 
salute it with the significant words, — "I pledge 
allegiance to my flag and to the country for 
which it stands, one nation indivisible, with 
liberty and justice for all." 

With the opening of the schools in New 
England, the salutation to the flag is caught 
up, hour after hour, with the course of the sun 
across the continent. It is noon in Boston 
before the children in San Francisco pledge 
allegiance in their morning devotions. By 
the time the morning salutation is given in the 
school outposts of Alaska, the school flag on 
the Atlantic has been furled! Every moment 
during the entire school day, somewhere in the 
Republic, American girls and boys are stretch- 
ing forth their hands to express their sincere 
devotion to the nation's emblem, and pledge 
their allegiance to the liberty and justice for 
which it stands. 

It is a scene which grips the heart with 
hope, when once it is pictured by the imag- 
ination. "Old Glory," says Eugene Wood, 

has floated victoriously on many a gallant 
fight by sea and land, but never do its silver 



a 



142 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

stars glitter more bravely or its blood-red 
stripes curve more proudly on the fawning 
breeze than when it floats above the school- 
house, over the daily battle against ignorance 
and prejudice, for freedom and for equal 
rights. ..." 

'The flag of our union forever," is our 
prayer, our heart's desire for us and for our 
children after us. Heroes have died to give 
us that, heroes with glazing eyes beheld the 
tattered ensign and spent their last breath to 
cheer it as it passed on in triumph. "We who 
are about to die, salute thee." The heart 
swells to think of it. But it swells to think 
that day by day thousands upon thousands of 
little children stretch out their hands towards 
that flag and pledge allegiance to it. "We 
who are about to live, salute theel" 

RVhat is it that these millions, who are about 
to live for their country, are saluting? Their 
flag? Yes. But their flag only as an emblem. 
An emblem of what? Their country? Yes. 
But what is their country? No one has ever 
seen his country. It is not the soil, or the 
buildings or the public officials or the people. 
It is an unseen spiritual idea ; it is the will to be 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 143 

one nation; it exists only in the hearts of the 
people. What is this unseen and imperish- 
able idea, which constitutes the country, and 
of which the flag is the symbol? 

It has never been better described than in 
the brief dynamic words, uttered by President 
Lincoln, in our most sacred building, the plain 
brick building in Philadelphia, in which the 
Republic was born. "I have often pondered," 
said our typical American, ^'over the dangers 
which were incurred by the men who assem- 
bled here, and who formed and adopted the 
Declaration of Independence. I have pon- 
dered over the toils of the ofl5cers and soldiers 
who achieved that independence. I have 
often inquired of myself what great principle 
or idea it was that kept this confederacy so 
long together. It was not the mere matter of 
the separation of the colonies from the 
motherland, but that sentiment in the Declar- 
ation, which gave promise that in due time the 
weight would be lifted from the shoulders of 
all men." The same sentiment which six 
months later he thus expressed: "This is es- 
sentially a people's contest . . . for maintain- 
ing in the world that form and substance of 



144 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

government whose leading object is to elevate 
the condition of men, to lift artificial weights 
from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laud- 
able pursuits for all, to afiford all an unfettered 
start and a fair chance in the race of life." 

This is the ideal which makes America to 
be what she is; it is the ideal to which she was 
dedicated at her birth; it is the religion of 
democracy, of which the flag is the emblem, 
and on account of which it is justified in claim- 
ing the major loyalty of all friends of free- 
dom. The national movement to organize 
local communities into little democracies aims 
to preserve this ideal for the flag. It not only 
seeks to inspire all youths and adults to pledge 
allegiance to the flag with the same sincere and 
understanding devotion, with which school 
girls and boys pledge theirs. It seeks to do 
more. It seeks to inspire the practice of citi- 
zenship. If in any section of the country or 
in any phase of its social, political, or indus- 
trial life the flag's ideal of liberty and justice 
exists in theory only and not in fact, it chal- 
lenges citizens to do their utmost, just as Lin- 
coln did, to make its ideal a reality and to 
exhibit its meaning in practice. 



PRACTICE OF CITIZENSHIP 145 

To secure liberty and justice for all; to lift 
artificial burdens from all shoulders; to 
achieve "freemen's citizenship"; to preserve 
government "of the people, by the people and 
for the people"; to develop small communities 
into little democracies with schoolhouses for 
their capitols; to put human rights above 
property rights, as our boys in the trenches of 
France are now doing; to apply ethical 
standards to politics and economics; to make 
social, political, and economic conditions such 
that all citizens, both native and foreign born, 
when speaking of America, may say, "My 
Country" and mean what they say; that they 
may say it not only with honesty but with such 
a degree of enthusiasm as to be willing to put 
the interests of "My Country" above the in- 
terests of "My Self," — nothing less than this, 
as I understand it, is the meaning of the flag. 
To make its meaning clear through the prac- 
tice of citizenship is the aim of the community 
center movement. It is a permanent and 
dominant challenge to all loyal citizens, if 
America is not to become "a land of broken 
promise." 



PART IV 

A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 



A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 

The following is the constitution prepared 
by the writer for a community center in Wash- 
ington, D. C, and is reproduced here as a sug- 
gestion to other communities : 

PREAMBLE 

We, the people of the Wilson Normal Community of 
the City of Washington, D. C, in order to secure the 
advantages of organized self-help, to make public opinion 
more enlightened and effective, to promote the education 
of adults and youths for citizenship in a democracy, to 
organize the use of the public school as the community 
capitol, to foster a neighborhood spirit through which 
the community may become a more efficient social unit, 
to prevent needless v^aste through the duplication of social 
activities, to engage in cooperative enterprises for our 
moral and material welfare, and to create a social order 
more in harmony with the conscience and intelligence of 
the Nation, do ordain and establish this constitution. 

Article I. — Name 
The name of this organization shall be the Wilson 
Normal Community Association, and its headquarters the 
Wilson Normal School Building. 

Article II. — Location 

The community shall be defined as follows : Beginning 

149 



I50 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

at Fourteenth and W Streets, thence north on the east 
side of Fourteenth Street to Monroe Street, thence east 
on the east side of Monroe Street and Park Road to 
Georgia Avenue, thence south on the west side of Georgia 
Avenue to Irving Street, thence east on the vSouth side of 
Irving Street to Soldiers' Home, thence south on w^est 
side of Soldiers* Home, McMillan Park, and Reser- 
voir to College Street, thence west on north side of Col- 
lege Street and Barry Place to Tenth Street, thence 
south on the west side of Tenth Street to W Street, thence 
west on the north side of W Street to Fourteenth Street, 
the place of beginning. 

Article III. — Members 
The members of the association shall be all white adult 
citizens of this community, both men and women. A 
limited number of nonresident members may be received 
into membership, provided they are not registered members 
of any other organized community. Organizations now 
in operation which are nonpartisan, nonsectarian, and 
whose aim is the public welfare, such as "Citizens associa- 
tions," "Home and school leagues," "Red Cross chap- 
ters," "Women's clubs," "College settlements," "House- 
keepers' alliances," desiring to retain their name and 
identity for the sake of cooperation with other branches of 
similar organizations, may become departments of this 
association. There shall be no suggestion of superiority 
or inferiority among the departments. The members of 
each department shall have the same standing as all other 
members. 

Article IV. — Officers 

The association shall elect by ballot from its own 



A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 151 

members a board of directors, or community council, which 
shall be both a legislative and an executive body. It 
shall consist of not less than 6 nor more than 1 5 members. 
They shall be elected for a period of three years, except- 
ing for the first year, when one-third of the number shall 
be elected for one year, one-third for two years, and one- 
third for three years. 

The chairman of the committee in charge of each de- 
partment of the association shall be a member of the 
board of directors. A chairman may be appointed by the 
board or selected by the department itself and confirmed 
by the board. Chairmen shall have the right to select 
the members of their own committees. 

The community secretary, whose public election is pro- 
vided for by the board of education, shall be a member 
of the board of directors and a member ex officio of all 
committees. It shall be his duty to exercise general super- 
vision over all the activities of the association, and to 
nominate, by and with the consent of the directors, all 
assistant secretaries. They shall have the right to at- 
tend all meetings of the board and take part in the discus- 
sions, but shall have no vote. 

As soon after the annual election as convenient the 
directors shall meet to organize, and shall elect from their 
own number a president, vice president, and a secretary- 
treasurer, who shall perform the duties usually performed 
by such officers, and who shall also be the officers of the 
association. 

Article V. — Departments 
The board of directors is authorized to organize and 
operate departments of activity, such as forum, civics, 
recreation, home and school, buying club, and community 



152 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

bank, whose activities shall be supervised and whose ac- , 
counts shall be audited by the board of directors. * 

1. Forum Department: The committee in charge of 
this department shall arrange for public meetings, at such 
time as the association may decide, for the free and orderly 
discussion of all questions which concern the social, moral, 
political, and economic welfare of the community. It 
shall select a presiding officer for such meetings, secure 
speakers, suggest subjects, and formulate the method of 
conducting discussions. 

2. Recreation Department: The committee In charge 
of this department shall provide and conduct games, 
dances, community dramas, musicals, motion pictures, and 
shall promote all similar play activities, with a view to 
increasing the joy, health, and good fellowship among both 
adults and youths. 

3. Civics Department: The committee in charge of this 
department shall provide the members with the means of 
securing information concerning politics, local, national, 
and international; it shall stimulate a more intelligent 
interest in government by the use of publicity pamphlets; 
it shall suggest ways in which the members may con- 
tribute to the economic and efficient administration of the 
city's affairs ; it shall provide cour»es of studies for young 
men and women as a preparation for citizenship, and de- 
vise methods of organizing the youth into voluntary, co- 
operative, and constructive forms of patriotic service. 

4. The Home and School Department : The committee 
in charge of this department shall seek to promote closer 
cooperation between the school and home, the teachers 
and parents ; it shall aim to improve the school equipment, 
to secure more adequate support and better housing con- 
ditions for teachers; it shall organize and conduct study 



A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 153 

classes for youths and adults; it shall provide such ways 
and means or remove such obstacles as may be necessary 
to enable all children to remain in school until they have 
finished the grammar grades, whether these obstacles be 
the kind of studies now pursued in school, the home con- 
ditions of the children, or the economic conditions of the 
community. 

5. Buying Club Department: The committee in charge 
of this department shall organize and operate in the school 
a delivery station for food products with a view of de- 
creasing the cost of living; it shall establish a direct re- 
lation between the producer and consumer in order to 
eliminate wastes; it shall seek to safeguard the people's 
health by furnishing the purest food obtainable; it shall 
aim to moralize trade by giving full weight and measure 
and substituting public service for private exploitation; it 
shall eliminate debt by asking no credit and giving none ; 
it shall practice economy and equity in order to secure 
a larger return to the producer and decrease the cost 
to the consumer. 

An annual fee shall be required of all members of the 
buying club, payable quarterly in advance, to defray 
operating expenses, the amount of the fee to be determined 
by the committee, and it shall be decreased or increased 
as the number of members and volume of business war- 
rant. All members shall secure their goods at the net 
wholesale cost price. 

Goods shall be sold only to members of the buying club. 
Membership in the buying club is open only to members 
of the association and only to those members who are 
depositors in the community bank. 

The buying club shall set aside annually a sum equal 
to 2 per cent of the amount of its sales, to be used by the 



154 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

association for the purpose of educating its members in the 
principle and practice of cooperation, until public appropri- 
ations are sufficient to provide the means for such educa- 
tion. 

The club shall set aside annually a sum equal to i per 
cent of the amount of its sales as a reserve fund to cover 
unexpected losses. 

The committee in charge of the buying club shall serve 
without compensation but may employ one or more execu- 
tives to conduct the business of the club, who shall receive 
compensation for their services, the amount of which shall 
be fixed by the committee, but the amount shall be deter- 
mined, as far as possible, on a percentage basis according 
to service rendered. 

All checks, drafts, or notes made in the name of the 
club shall be countersigned by the chairman of the direct- 
ing committee. The executive in charge of the buying 
club shall be required to give a surety bond. 

6. Community Bank Department: The committee in 
charge of this department shall organize and conduct a 
credit union bank for members of the association in order 
to capitalize honestly and to democratize credit, and to 
multiply the efficiency of their savings by pooling them 
for cooperative use. It shall be known as the "Com- 
munity Bank." It shall receive savings deposits both from 
children and adults and shall make loans. It shall, if 
possible, be a part of the curriculum of the school, at least 
as regards deposits of children. The committee in charge 
shall serve without compensation, but may employ one 
executive to conduct its business who shall be required 
to furnish a surety bond. 

The bank shall make loans only to individual members 
of the association and to the buying club for productive 



A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 155 

purposes, but no loan shall be made to any member of the 
committee in charge of the bank. Deposits may be re- 
ceived from those other than members. 

The bank shall issue no capital stock, but shall charge 
entrance fees, which shall be used as a reserve fund and 
returned to depositors when they withdraw from member- 
ship. 

The bank may make small short-time loans secured 
only by the character and industry of the borrower. It 
may make long-time loans, secured by mortgage, character, 
and industry, to young men and women for the purpose 
of helping them to secure houses in which to start homes, 
and the payment of such loans may be made on the 
amortization plan. 

The rate of interest charged for all loans shall be 5 
per cent. The amount of interest allowed on deposits 
shall be the net profit after operating expenses are paid. 
The bank shall use no other bank as a clearing house 
which is not under the supervision of the United States 
Government. All loans shall be made by check and all 
such checks shall be countersigned by the chairman of the 
directing committee. 

An amount equal to one-half of i per cent of its 
deposits shall be set aside as a reserve fund. An amount 
equal to lo per cent of its deposits shall be invested in 
Federal Farm Loan Bonds, Liberty Bonds, or in other 
Federal, State, or municipal bonds. 

The community bank shall be operated not on the 
principle of unlimited, joint, and several liability of its 
members, but it shall have the right to demand pro rata 
payments from them to meet any loss through unpaid 
loans, provided the reserve fund is not sufficient to cover 
such losses. 



156 A COMMUNITY CENTER 



Article VI. — Cooperation 

There shall be no dues for membership in the com- 
munity association, the dues having already been paid 
through public taxation ; but the association, by voluntary 
subscription and in other ways, may raise funds to 
inaugurate or support its work if the amount received 
from public appropriation is insufficient to meet its needs. 

The association may unite with other similar associa- 
tions in the District of Columbia to form a community 
league, in order to conduct a central forum or cooperate 
with each other for any other purpose which may serve 
their common welfare. 

The association adopts the policy of cordial cooperation 
with the board of education and provides that a designated 
member of the school board may be a member ex officio 
of its board of directors. He may attend any of its 
meetings, take part in the discussions, and vote on all 
questions. 

Article VII. — Meetings 

The board of directors shall hold monthly meetings at 
such times as they may determine. All regular monthly 
meetings of the board shall be open meetings. When a 
vacancy occurs, through death or otherwise, the board may 
fill the vacancy until the next annual meeting. If any 
director shall be absent from three successive stated meet- 
ings without excuse, such absence shall be deemed a resig- 
nation. 

Quarterly meetings of the association shall be held on 
the second Tuesday of January, April, July, and October. 
The April quarterly meeting shall be the annual meeting 



A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 157 

to elect officers, hear reports from all departments, and to 
transact such other business as may be necessary. 

This constitution may be amended at any annual meet- 
ing or at any quarterly meeting if previous notice of the 
proposed amendment is given. In all elections the pref- 
erential ballot may be used with reference both to officers 
and measures; the initiative, referendum, and recall may 
be employed in such manner as the association itself may 
determine. 



AN OUTLINE FOR A CONSTITUTION 

The following is a digest of the preceding constitution 
for those communities which may prefer a briefer form: 

Article I. — Name 
This association shall be known as The Community 

Center Association of School District No. , 

County of , State of , and its headquarters 

the schoolhouse. 

Article II. — Object 
Its object shall be to mobilize the people of this com- 
munity for national service and organized self-help, to 
equip its members for citizenship in a democracy, to pre- 
vent needless waste through the duplication of activities, 
and to create a social order in harmony with the conscience 
and intelligence of the Nation. 

Article III. — Members 
Its members shall be all adult citizens of the district. 
Any organization which is nonpartisan and nonsectarian 



158 A COMMUNITY CENTER 

and whose aim is the public welfare may become a depart- 
ment of the association. 

Article IV. — Officers 
The association shall elect not less than 9 and not more 
than 15 directors, who shall constitute the community 
council. The council shall elect from its own members 
a president, vice president, and secretary-treasurer, who 
shall also be the officers of the association. The chair- 
man in charge of any department of work shall be a 
member of the community council. 

Article V. — Community Secretary 
The community council may employ an executive or 
business manager to carry on its work, who shall be paid 
either from public appropriations or by volunteer contri- 
butions. 

Article VI. — Departments 
The association shall organize and conduct whatever 
departments of activity it deems necessary to meet present 
and permanent needs, both local and national, such as 
forum, civics, recreation, home and school, buying club, 
and community bank. 

Article VII. — Finances 
There shall be no dues for membership in the associa- 
tion, the dues having already been paid through public 
taxation. But when necessary it may raise, through 
voluntary subscriptions and in other ways, the funds re- 
quired to conduct its activities. 



A SUGGESTED CONSTITUTION 159 

Article VIII. — Meetings 
The association shall hold quarterly meetings, one of 
which shall be the annual meeting to hear reports and 
elect officers. The community council shall hold regular 
monthly meetings which shall be open to the public. The 
departments shall be free to hold as many meetings as 
may be necessary. 



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A critical study of the attempts to formulate the condi- 
tions of human advance. This volume attempts to bring 
together the most important contributions of English, 
American, French, German, Italian, and Russian writers 
to the literature of social progress. But it is more than a 
mere digest ; it is a critical analysis and an evaluation. 
The outline of this work includes five chapters on the 
basis of progress in human nature ; two on the idea of 
progress as a scientific concept, and tests or criteria for 
recognizing progress ; seven on the materiahstic interpre- 
tation of progress ; five on the biological interpretation 
(including eugenics, race conflict, war, and peaceful group 
contacts). Considerable space is given also to a discussion 
of the r61e of property, government, law, public opinion, 
leadership, art, and religion in human advance. The edu- 
cational and political implications of a sound theory of 
progress receive careful consideration. 



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The City Worker's World In America 

By MARY KINGSBURY SIMKHOVITCH 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.2$ 



An unusually wide experience in Settlement and 
Friendly Visiting work attests Mrs. Simkhovitch's al- 
most unique qualifications for speaking with authority 
on the phases of city life covered by her book. Our 
industrial population is grouped almost entirely in urban 
communities. This class furnishes by far the largest 
element in every American city. The conditions under 
which the city workers live are a matter of vital con- 
cern to the nation's welfare. 

A comprehensive and vivid picture of these conditions 
is given in '' The City Worker's World in America." 
Among the topics covered are The Industrial Family, 
Dwellings, Standard of Living, Education, At Work, Lei- 
sure, Health, Poverty, Politics, etc. The book abounds in 
suggestions of the most practical kind, while the informa- 
tion it affords is of great value to every social worker. 

" There are suggestive and alluring sentences which set 
the mind working to follow the author's pathway. ... It 
is a book that deals with a great theme in a manner that 
shows real experience and understanding." 

— T/ie Christian Register. 



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Poverty and Social Progress 



By MAURICE PARMELEE, Ph.D. 

Author of " The Science of Human Behavior " 



Cloihy $i.go 



The author has made a comprehensive survey of the problems 
of poverty which shows the one-sided character of many of the 
explanations of its causation, and which will at least furnish the 
starting point for an effective program of prevention. 

In a brief introduction are discussed the organization of 
society and pathological social conditions. The second part is 
devoted to an extended discussion of the causes and conditions 
of poverty, in which the author has, by extensiveness of treat- 
ment, placed the emphasis on the two fundamental economic 
problems, namely, those of production and the distribution of 
wealth. Three chapters are devoted to a discussion of the 
biological factors in the causation of poverty. Readers not in- 
terested in this aspect of the subject may omit these chapters, 
however, without being inconvenienced in reading the remainder 
of the book. 

Part III describes the Remedial and Preventive Meas- 
ures and includes chapters on: The Modern Humanitarian 
Movement ; The Nature of Philanthropy both Private and 
Public; Dependents and Defectives ; Eugenic Measures; Thrift; 
Social Insurance ; The Raising of Wages and the Regulation of 
Labor Supply ; The Productiveness of Society ; The Industrial 
Democracy. 

The book is suitable for use as a text-book for college and 
university courses on charities, poverty, pauperism, dependency 
and social pathology. It will also be useful to persons who are 
interested in these important social questions. 



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AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES " . 

Edited by Professor SAMUEL McCUNE LINDSAY 

Social Reform and the Constitution 

By frank J. GOODNOW i2mo,$i.50 

" The work is well worth not only reading but study and is a decided contribution 
to the literature of the subject." — Boston Transcript. 

The New Basis of Civilization 

By SIMON N. PATTEN i2mo,$i.oo 

"The book is valuable and inspiring in its general conception and guiding 
principles. Social workers will welcome it, and moralists should greatly profit by 
its teachings." — Chicago Evening Post. 

Standards of Public Morality 

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" The book is worth reading not only once, but twice." — New York Times. 

Misery and Its Causes 

By EDWARD T. DEVINE i2moy$i.25 

"One of the most vital and helpful books on social problems ever pub- 
lished." — Congregationalist and Christian World. 

Governmental Action for Social Welfare 

By JEREMIAH W. JENKS i2mo,U-oo 

" Professor Jenks' little book ought to be in the hands of every member of every 
legislature in the country." — Review of Reviews. 

The Social Basis of Religion 

By SIMON N. PATTEN i2moy$i.2S 

" It is a work of deep thought and abundant research. Those who read it will 
find their ideas and thoughts quickened and will be sure that their time has been 
profitably spent." — Salt Lake Tributie. 

The Church and Society 

By R. FULTON CUTTING i2mo,$i.2S 

" A stimulating and informing little book." — Boston Herald. 

The Juvenile Court 

By THOMAS D. ELIOT i2m0y$i.2S 

" Another volume which will repay careful reading — the most useful treatise on 
youthful criminology." — Providence Journal. 

Social Insurance : A Program for Social Reform 

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The City Worker's World in America 

By MARY KINGSBURY SIMKHOVITCH, 

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